Xiang Yu

I buried my husband fourteen years ago. Last week, he knocked on my door and asked for his sons back. That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was…

My son came home with grease under his fingernails for six straight days before I finally followed him. The first time, he tried to hide his hands in his sleeves….

I saw her during the second hymn. She sat alone in the back pew, not crying, not praying — just watching. Her dress was gray, not black, and her expression…

My mother broke her arm badly enough that she needed surgery. She is sixty-eight years old, lives alone in another city, and the break required a cast that ran nearly…

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…