A bustling, well-tarred road divides the educational potential of Kasipatti town by gender. On one side lies the Kasipatti Boys’ Senior Secondary School. On the…
Five glasses of lemon squash are placed in front of us. Mummy has taught me to never be the first one to reach out for…
“I’m coming in a minute. Hold the door for me, won’t you, Robi!” Madhura yelled from somewhere deep inside the house. Robi, her son, was…
Looking back, no-one could remember when the clown first appeared on the corner by the park. Everyone agreed that it was sometime last spring and,…
My wife screams and my daughter’s hair-mottled scalp crowns. The doctor guides my hands and I grasp my daughter, her small body taught and alive,…
Ma at the bookshelves, searching for new knowledge. She takes a novel between her calloused fingertips, rummages through the pages like she’s looking for something…
ATTENTION PASSENGERS: Sorry to startle and disappoint, to inconvenience and annoy, but our priority one is not arrival or commute, it’s code for deliverance of…
Everyone say black is the colour of death. But Emily know it ain’t true. Black is the colour of Mama bein’ alive. It the colour…
I wake up from my nap. The house is empty. You said you were going to the store, but that was many hours ago. In…
A lean man of average height with intelligent eyes set far apart, a narrow chin, and a mouth that sloped downward at its corners, August…
Every evening, she set up the altar afresh, because she couldn’t leave it out overnight. Even if it didn’t rain, the dew at dawn was…
“There’s not supposed to be a test,” I said. The man behind the table gave me a skewed look, his mouth turned in a malignant…
The tears came early that night, something she had expected. She had felt it building all day, a jagged boulder against her chest, sliding deeper…
Alan finds a glade with no overhead branches that might come crashing down if winds blow up. But hard ground, rough with exposed pebbles, frustrates…
Jordan chewed on her pinky nail until it started to bleed. “Shit!” She reached over Avery’s lap, opened the glove box, and pulled out a…
When I first see it, I shudder. The knuckles are wrinkled and gnarly. The skin is gray. The middle finger tilts too far to the…
I remember the last time I saw my father. He left for war and died a short time later, a Marine helicopter pilot, flying in…
When I was growing up, the Chicago suburbs of Chicago ranked within a hierarchy of goodness and desirability. You had the ones on the bottom…
The summer after 6th grade, my lizard died. My parents had never owned reptiles before and the vet we took our dog to wouldn’t cremate…
“Hey! Where’d that woman put my fan?” Mimi yelled. “That woman—she took it. I know she did. She’s always taking my stuff.” Ruth held her…