The universe seems small. Lear grasps it between fingers, plucking the strand of hair from Lina’s head. She sleeps on, not knowing the guilt Lear carries in knots between his shoulder blades.  Taking the first piece of hair had been an accident. And he promises, “This will be the last.” Lear…

The time jumper returned to December, 2013, with a muffled thump of boots on carpet.  Her “jump room” was a modified walk-in closet with delusions of grandeur. It was perfectly square, just wide enough to turn around in, and all white inside (white carpet, white walls, white light); mirrors hung on each…

FIVE At four p.m., a month after Mom died, Aunt Peggy first came to my doorstep with her black bag. She held her hand out to me and said, “Hello Maggie, I’m your Aunt Peggy.” I was five. “What’s in the bag, Aunt Peggy?” I reached out a hand to…

The Pyrenees Mountains, 1907 There was a movement outside the window at the end of the hallway, a flutter of shadow in the darkness beyond.  Maudine stopped and waited, alert. She had already extinguished all the torches in the long stone corridor but the moonlight was bright. It bounced from…

October 4, 1970Tishomingo, Oklahoma Tammy lingered over a cigarette rimmed red with someone else’s lipstick. She exhaled, the wisp of stolen smoke rising to join the music that seeped from the diner’s radio. She stubbed out the burning ember, and as the last spark spiraled heavenward, she closed her eyes…

June 10th, 1998 I hold up the pair of skeleton keys, clipped together with a golden seven keychain. Mother’s only forty-eight but the cancer makes her seem older. “You’ll need those to contact him.”  She means my father. A man I’ve met twice. A man who blamed his life long…

Dallas is waiting for a train. She is slumped on a smooth marble bench, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, chest heavy with the occasional shuddering breath. She looks out over the water, clear blue reflecting the sparkling sun and perfect fluffy clouds. It is like…

Airports have always terrified me. It may seem foolish that something as innocuous as an airport could instill such fear in a person, but the idea of them positively disturbs me. That tentative, in-between place where people last touched ground, soon to board a gravity-defying, cylindrical enclosed tube, about to…