Rivals It wasn’t that she didn’t get the part, she almost always didn’t get the part. She was the call-back queen. Everybody loved her. Casting agents went to see her in plays even when they knew her. She was one…

Saying goodbye to Paul………I shall sit here in the Page Street Writers Cafe on this 26th day of August, 2022, here in San Francisco , and I will try to write away my terror, if such a thing is possible.…

After the bride-to-be confirmed that the wedding was still happening, not postponed, I had to remind myself again and again that the wedding must be a day of celebration, not grief. But the wedding day would be the first time…

"We have paid for these things with our blood, but we cannot hold unless we receive more support from your city. There is just no way to say it. Help us now or you will lose our protection, you will…

The sharpest truth is unspoken said to myself, to God, flowing freely from the point of my pen’s unfiltered morning thought. The sharpest truth is the jagged tear in the page, when an air pocket of rage bubbled to the…

After she told her mother about what the boy had said, and then her mother and father talked and decided between them what was to be done.

Saint Stupid Day On Wednesday, I told my friend Jackie that I sometimes wish that I had a mild cold, nothing serious, just enough that I could stay in bed and read all day and then have soup and a…

IN A LAND far too close, there is a King named Harumph. He has a peculiar orange face and a lumpish, doughy body he tries to contain within costly suits of broadcloth and grey sharkskin, dark blue blazers and crisp…

That little piece of dust I followed as a child in the sunbeam in the living room has now reached planet Mars. From my living room, it attached itself to our dog Tootsie, and when Tootsie sneezed, it catapulted into…

I chiseled at the idea to see if it would budge, but that made it only balloon more between us. Black letters jumbled and spun in a ball, like they were caught in a dryer. I was entranced. You were…

The sound of laughter echoed in Agatha’s head. It was children’s laughter. On her daily, secret visit to John, she got close enough to him to hear his laugh. It was clear, bright, joyful. In its echo she heard other…

Peony opened the letter, and read it for the hundredth time. It was from her father to her mother, pointing out the possibility that they had discovered a microorganism living in the dark, which ate carbon dioxide and produced oxygen.…