Xiang Yu

The most important photograph in our house hangs above the couch, and the glass has a thin crack in one corner from the afternoon I knocked it off the wall…

The lilies were white, which felt right for someone I had never quite known how to love. I had told myself on the drive over that people change. That sixty…

When Aaron called on Friday evening and said he wanted me at his birthday dinner, I cried after we hung up. It was such a small thing — Mom, come…

She didn’t cry when Clara snapped the pink cape around her neck, or when the salon chair spun once and made her giggle. She didn’t cry when the comb worked…

I was still in my scrubs, washing dishes after a double shift, when Noah asked me if a pirate could also be a doctor. “I think a pirate can be…

The morning of my wedding, I sat in front of the bridal suite mirror watching a stylist pin tiny pearls into my hair, and tried to ignore the cold, quiet…

I watched my grandmother run her fingers across the folded business class blanket the way you’d touch something you never expected to be allowed near. “This is nice,” she whispered….

I was sixteen years old when my stepfather gave me a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all. Marry Mr. Haskett — a man nearly my father’s age who…

My name is Margaret, and I was not a good person in high school. I’ve had fifty-nine years to make peace with that sentence, and I still haven’t managed it…