This is how the Holocaust ended for me, a solitary Polish-Jew liberated by American soldiers from the infamous death camp Mauthausen. I was at the time an emaci...
Working with the bees, I am not just looking at the same insects my mother once looked at, I am also becoming her. I am lying down in her body and standing up. ...
Nick the manager announced that he was heading out for boot camp in a few weeks. His career as a fast food manager was done. Better things were in his future. H...
If you had asked me before this tragedy what the chance was of her committing suicide, I would have said zero percent. Zero. Ask me now and I’ll tell you, if it...
It was only a matter of time before one of us was going to break down and scream, beat our fists against the van’s upholstery in disbelief and frustration.
In presentations for Breaking the Silence NM, a program to teach mental illness and suicide awareness to youth, I wanted to reach young people before suicide be...
I never thought of our river as hungry until it swallowed Schafer whole, until he breathed water instead of air. He and some friends doused themselves in Jim Be...
A friend, or a date, or a stranger who spotted him lying in the street, a person brave enough to touch a seizing, unconscious man, would search Eric’s pants for...
Her admission that her diagnosis was terrible news showed a vulnerability in her I had never before witnessed. I had believed that nothing ever weighed on her,...
My father and mother are trapped in this country, waiting for many years for permission to immigrate. Every six months he patiently goes alone to the Soviet Vis...
Life with Dad was an endless game. We shot candles out of Mother's silver candelabra on the picnic table. I learned to drive racing the jeep around hay bales in...
Only when the moon rises do I see it, see her—the glint of silver and then green and silver, the flash of scales. Only then do I know: my mother is a mermaid, a...
Jim Morrison lolls on the beach in my mind, and I let go of the day and follow him down to this other world. Do women get to be so free, lounging, writing, owni...
I rubbed the outside of my own hip, remembering what a kick from a steel-toed boot felt like when I was once curled up in a ball on the ground. I had old injuri...
My left leg is stuck out as if I was on the verge of going somewhere. My mother will meet him for the first time three months from now.
Does it start with what damaged him—a father who only survived starvation in a series of Japanese POW camps because he was a natural scientist, a botanist, who ...
*Featured Artwork by Mali Fischer The word understory was gifted to me by a dear friend, as many good things are. Its meaning can be assumed, because all humans...
Fear is like a tattoo; it can never be washed away.
For years, I believed I could FIX my son, control, restrict, protect him, by sheer force of will. When that didn’t work, I’d throw up my hands in despair and tr...
How does one find self-worth standing before the evidence of broken dreams, unrealized potential, and past mistakes? This is what plagued me as I stared at the ...
