Once long ago—before Georgia was born, before getting married, in the days when apartments consisted of pee-stained futons and speaker wires tracing across the floor, guitars laid lovingly in their plush cases, overflowing ashtrays, no artwork, no plants, only temperamental cats for decoration—Carrie wrote a song about divorce that became a college-radio hit.
In July 2021, five weeks after my mother died, my husband dropped me off at the emergency room of the small hospital in the Massachusetts town where my father now lived alone.
Ruth knew she was pregnant, but they’d driven the hundred miles from Gabbs to Tonopah anyway, for confirmation, she guessed, or for the change of scenery—though everywhere she looked there was desert and mountains, more desert, more mountains.
Apples belong to the genus Malus. I stand with my hips pressing into the sink’s marble, rinsing and twisting these sandy, gunmetal stems out of the fat fruit
How long I’ve dreamt of you, teenaged and long-legged, lying on our porch, your mud-speckled sandals kicked off to the side, watching a tree slowly split
My dream daughter is chopping onions. She has been chopping for hours, slipping off the skin like tea-colored lingerie, slicing them thinly like the rings of some beloved planet.
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