She counts the villagers’ secrets. Marigolds already have begun gathering souls back with their scent as they tilt toward sunlamps beneath floorboards, while smiling wooden calacas hide in closets, in cupboards, their skeleton faces hewn by candlelight.
Read MoreWhen Dennis and I separated, he asked where I would stay.
‘Spain, maybe,’ I said, stuffing socks into a suitcase. His parents owned the brick flat where we lived, and he was right to ask: he knew I had nowhere to go. I didn’t care, I wanted to be dramatic, that he worried I might sleep in my car, or be reckless in other ways was what I wanted …
Read MoreIt was madness, Beth. I’m telling you it was madness – you, who know better than anyone what Euan’s obsession did to him. What it did to all of us.
Read MoreWe learned to say chicken in many languages. In Maori, they call it heihei, in Australian, chook, in Khmer, sach mean, in Thai, ki, in Chinese, ji, in Arabic, dijaj. And we learned that no matter the culture, a rubber chicken is the ultimate icebreaker. When you pull a rubber chicken from your pack, nobody can contain their smile. Even the shyest agree to a picture. Friendships become inevitable.
Read MoreWhen Dante laughed or hung his mouth open in concentration, you could see the sharp edge where the false teeth ended and the darkness that led to his stomach began.
Read MoreI leaned in to listen to how they remembered the dying back when they had been alive together. I anticipated grieving myself; I had called the adoption agency.
Read More“‘The next time she saw him, he was sitting under a cypress tree in her garden. She thought he was stone like the statues in Antioch. Mary looked out at him and she could hardly move, he was so beautiful. She clothed herself in the raiments of Damascus—’
‘In what?’”
Read More“She reached toward him, and he took her hand again. Both were aware how thin and loose the skin on her hand felt, like onion-skin paper wrapped about a little cage of bone.”
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