The Nanny – (Vocal Media)

I laugh when a sound from downstairs startles me. I pause, my body going stiff. When it comes again, I grab Bebe’s softball bat from next to the bed and head downstairs. She stays at my back, holding onto my night shirt. The house is dark. “Hear anything?” I whisper.

“No,” she replies.

We flip on lights as we go. I keep waiting for someone to pop out, to come at us with a knife. But there are no shadows in the corners, nobody waiting at the door for us. All the windows are shut. Everything is locked.

Still, when I enter the kitchen, I find the sink water is running.

Hollow Through the Valley – (The Rookery)

Fred jumped up into her lap, nuzzling her neck. He had a pattern of spots on his back, like randomly dispersed droplets of water. Years later, after the cancer spread, the same pattern of spots popped up on Edie’s hand. I would look down and touch them, smoothing my thumb back and forth like it would help. “They don’t hurt,” she would tell me. 

Mostly Sunny (with a Slight Chance of Rain) *2016 Raymond Carver Fiction Award Winner – (Carve Magazine)

“When she looks out into the audience, her eyes search for me. I raise my hand in the air and something tugs at my stomach. It’s like the feeling I got last week when I was drying the dishes and a glass slipped out from between my damp fingers. That moment of grasping.”

speak  – (Blood Orange Review)

“Pain, I sign.
Dad doesn’t move.
Fix, I sign over my chest. Fix, fix, fix.
Dad takes my hand and squeezes it in his own, so tight I can’t sign. I can barely move. Not broken, he signs with his other hand. I love you.”

Ray of God, novel opening – (Embark Literary Magazine)

“My chest tightens. I get that exploding feeling that I got in the office earlier, looking at John. It’s as if there’s another me, just below my skin, crawling to get out but unable to find an opening. I’m always like this when JoEllen is unhappy with me. When she’s mad, I worry that she’ll stop loving me, that one day she’ll just stand up and walk away.”

no one wears nylons anymore – (Another Chicago Magazine)

“She shook her head and her curls bounced. She looked beautiful in a way I hadn’t seen before. She seemed, for once, like someone who could understand what it was like to be let down, and how it felt to constantly need more.”