“End Scene,” Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Volume 9, 2010.

Excerpt
If the writer fails to convey a sense of place, memoir is what countless critics and naysayers have accused it of being: pure, unadulterated navel-gazing. Place, then, is what saves us writers of memoir and personal essays; it allows us to exist in the world, to do what we do without being tarred and feathered for a disgusting display of self-indulgence.

Excerpt
“So, are you still with that boy you wrote about?” she asks.

I think back to the in-class writing assignment: A turning point. I had written about Mark.

“No,” I say and pause. I turn away from her and stare at an empty desk. He’s dead, I don’t say, but want to. After all, that’s the interesting part of the story. The sad part. But I know that this will only shock her, shame her for asking, and turn her off to future conversation with me. She is simply making small talk, appeasing her curiosity. She does not want something real or intense. She wants a cute love story, pleasantries. And I want friends. So I say nothing more.

But in my head is this: He’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead. In some moments, moments like these, moments in which I think too much, dream too much, or am asked about a particular time in my past, it’s all I hear.

He’s dead.

“A Story of Old Age,” Paradigm, The Parker Issue, August 2007. Also included in Paradigm Volume One, available for purchase.

Excerpt
I was loading my laundry into the washing machine when my grandmother mentioned a story she had found in my grandfather’s filing cabinet.

“It was in with his teaching stuff,” she told me. “But I don’t know whether he taught it or not.”

“Oh?” I called to her from the kitchen, wondering if this bit of information had a point or if she was simply making conversation. My grandmother and I had spent more time alone together in the last three weeks than we had in the previous twenty-eight years of my existence; we had reached a conversational wasteland. “What’s it about?” I asked, slamming the top down and turning the knob. Water trickled then rushed.

“Well,” she said, watching me lower myself into the seat beside her, “it’s kind of interesting. The topic, I mean.”

I waited for her to continue. She pulled some paper-clipped papers out from underneath the mess of newspapers on her formerly white, now dirty-gray, couch. When my parents and brother had been in town the week before, when we thought my grandfather was dying, my brother had sprayed the couch with deodorant while my grandmother was in the bathroom.

“It’s about an old man at the end of his life who decides to go to a nursing home.”

“Huh,” I said. “That is interesting.” After lunch, we planned to visit my grandfather in his nursing home.

“The Blanket, Remembered,” Uncle Grumps, December 13, 2006.

Excerpt
Throughout the rest of the weekend, as I carried bags of clothing down the stairs, asked my grandfather if I could throw out his old briefcase, encouraged my grandmother to clean out yet another closet (“So are we done now?” she’d ask after every closet; my mom and I would shake our heads, and she would moan and grumble as if she were six, and we had just informed her that it was bedtime), as I paged through old photo albums, found an old, young picture of them, put it in my bag to take home with me—as I did all of this, played the role of dutiful granddaughter and daughter, the story—or my vague notion, recollection, and idea of the story—hung over me like, well, a blanket. Something important was said in that story; something I needed to read.

My grandfather, the former English professor, talks in stories and books and novels and authors and writers. His stories are about stories; they’re about books and novels and authors and writers. And in the four days that I spent with him—with my dad’s family—I grew tired of it. I wanted to talk in reality. I wanted to talk movers. And boxes. And old age. And death. And family resentments. And apologies. I wanted real life; I wanted him to face his.

But when I returned home, to my real life, I struggled to process my weekend, put it into words, convey the utter and complete exhaustion, sadness, guilt, and hollowness that I felt—all that family is and all that complexity, the intricacies of each relationship, the bitterness, the hurt feelings, the ways in which we forever torture, yet ultimately love, just love, one another.