My Mother’s Eyes
I pick up this morning’s newspaper and read another article about displaced Ukrainians, whose lives have been upended by a war instigated by Russia.
Stories Poems Essays
The Vanishing Sky
The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. The doors wheezed open, spilling cold air inside. Vani gripped Vinita’s shawl tighter. She had been warm, curled against her mother’s side, but now the wind nipped at her nose.
Onions
Every good dish starts with sautéed onions,” my mother used to say. It was a maxim she followed in her home kitchen and it seemed to be true…
The Box
The bathroom medicine cabinet—It has been three weeks. This will be the easiest I think. It isn’t. I can’t stop the mist in my eyes as I toss everyday medicines left over from normal ailments, the healthy days, the pre-cancer days.
Near Miss
I swerve when I hear the doctor’s words,
the news of her 26 cancerous lymph nodes
crosses the line and veers into my lane
the impact like an oncoming car
Miracle Worker, Metamorphosis, Form 42
I’m sitting across from a watery-eyed man with a tight-lipped smile—
there’s a faded ink stain on the cuff of his painfully white dress shirt,
and his glasses don’t quite sit right on his face.
I tell him about the time I stuck my fingers around a candle wick,
A Variation on Prayer
Leaving the gray, bleak evening behind, we enter the massive gothic splendor of stone, stained glass, gilded walls and fluted columns.
Song of Ocean
every day at edge of the wood
i turn and take that same trail
down past the large pines
through thicket and sedge
where very little light gets through
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
Who are these black figures, hovering around my bed like the dementors on the Hogwart’s Express? Am I dying? But there’s no bright light. Every breath is a struggle.