The day after my mother’s funeral Daddy quietly moved himself out of the Master bedroom and into the guestroom. He never slept in that Master bed they’d shared for 65 years again. Right after Daddy’s move across the hall he…

One of my students, a ten year old with identified emotional problems, decided he really wanted to challenge me to a holding your breath contest. He didn’t have a lot of same-age friends and I thought he just wanted to…

She dreams. She can't remember all the small stories behind her eyes, who can? But the last dream felt awake, like her real life. A white room, she thinks, yes, that's where I was. Maybe a doctor's office, a clinic.…

That American, she's so ignorant. A granddaughter of the KMT. But maybe I can convince her, and then what? Vivian told me to be nice; it's to get Yi Ting's on stage. But so what? Our trauma isn't for parading…

Finally, Fan asks her what are you looking for? This is the question I’d been waiting to ask. Maybe I'd been waiting for her to ask me. To be honest, I’ve just been trying to figure out who is in…

Today was a mom day. On alternating weeks, he stayed with his mom or his dad and this was a mom week. His mom lived with her boyfriend two towns farther away from school than his dad's house. He kept…

Agatha knew Andres was a man who adhered to a schedule, but she didn't know how scheduled until their marriage began. She was the cook of the house, yet Andres insisted on arranging all of their cupboards plate by plate…

When I first began teaching High School English to officially labeled “low literacy” students I wasn’t sure how to approach them. Not because of the obvious gaps in our age, gender, race, religion, family situation, economic class, religion or politics…

(Note: I'm using this morning writing to work on a novel in progress. We're fairly far in with this character, an environmental activist.) I’d laid it all out on the bed after I got back from dropping Ivy off at…

"This boy," Don thought to himself as Kevin disappeared into his phone. "Seems to be waiting for life to happen." Though Kevin has grown up primarily in west county, the muffled beats of aggressive, inner-city rap music pulsed from his…

For months M. Chavannes was just part of the guest list. Not a suitor to be taken seriously, and possibly, an annoyance, for Maman complained that he would talk her ear off and Papa did all he could to avoid…