On The Eve

Christmas Eve morning, before the celebrating begins, I stop at my usual coffee place. My car is stuffed with boxes of wrapped presents, the ribbons only slightly frayed from the sniper attacks of my cats. There is wine in the car. There are flannel pajamas and opal earrings and a shimmery skirt for church. Sometimes […]

Into the Archives

A couple of weeks ago, my sister showed up at my door with a powder blue file cabinet. She was tearing through my mother’s basement in a fit of productivity, and my file cabinet was an easy mark for eviction. I hadn’t added anything to this particular archive in at least 15 years. There were […]

Scrooged

“I never used to be this cold, and I don’t want to think these things about people, but everybody I see is just the dregs of society.” It’s a holiday party, and someone is worried about what his job has done to him. He continued, “Like, these people will sit and watch television and I’ll […]

That’s a Dealbreaker

Every month, I spend at least an hour or two wandering the bookstore and reading the first couple pages of a lot of different volumes. All those books are sitting around waiting to be touched, and there are only a few I want to spend time with, holding them in my lap and caressing them […]