I'm at the playground, sitting on a swing. There's a temple next door and, from time to time, the suggestion of incense wafts over. The chains holding me squeak as I sway, rutting a groove in the dirt beneath me. With the heel of my sneaker I dig up a child's barrette. My throat clogs. [...]

He drank his wine slowly, trying not to look at her. Her words were flat, and there was wine in their sounds that pressed his eyes against the table. She had invited him to her study, to the armchair beside the heavy tomes by Shakespeare and Schiller. The books were arranged in alphabetical order, first [...]

It came almost as a surprise to Etsuko that the sun had remembered to rise over the Takeda household as it always did. Breakfast had been like breakfast on any other morning: miso soup, rice and smoked fish. The one difference was that only Kyoko felt like eating anything. Slender as a young bamboo stem, [...]

Nested in this room, healing from life's perfect storm, I watched the winter come and go. I've seen the leaves of the maple outside the north window turn the colors of the season and fall to blanket the garden, watched the fruit of the rowan tree sunset-red and thickly clustered, feed the birds through December's [...]

Ann was a pretty girl. Not pretty like a supermodel or a Barbie doll. Not even girl-next-door pretty, the one whose memory lingered for years after she'd moved away. Ann's beauty was special, elusive, a “there's-just-something-about-her” pretty. The kind of pretty that meant bargains for a smile and a short sundress, no waiting in line [...]

A brisk morning wind carried the babble of Indian tongues to Jaya's ears as she waited at the curb. She pulled a silk scarf around her to ward off the slight chill in the air and shifted her weight from one achy foot to the other. Splashes of color caught her eye from either side [...]