There was another reason why I opted not to become a doctor like my daddy. He was the only pediatric urologist in town, so he left for work before I woke, shuttled between two hospitals throughout the day, and returned home after my bedtime. Unbeknownst to me, when he would come to give me a goodnight kiss while I was fast asleep, I’d stick out my tongue at him.
(nonfiction)
Danielle Steele’s Going Home, Alice Munro’s Dear Life. Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Ali flips open a moldy Farsi translation of The Three Musketeers, his eyes landing on “All falsehood is a mask” just as a slip of paper glides down onto the library’s patchy carpet.
(No Place is Foreign/fiction)
I’ve started thinking the worst of people. I wasn’t always like this. Can I keep doing this job? Why did I take the first one I found? Cause Mom just died and I couldn’t think straight? And minimum wage? Surely there is something better out there.
Inhabit your awareness. Breathe and scan throughout your body.(nonfiction)
On the last page of Eveline’s printed homicide story, she has scribbled, “The story might not follow the rules, but I got your attention, didn’t I? You’ll always remember me.”
Another Chicago Magazine 