fiction

  • Sometimes a Man Needs Stretchy Pants (And Yeah, We’re Talking About the Emotional Kind Too)

    “Chancho. When you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants.” Nacho Libre Nacho Libre drops that gem on his sidekick while getting busted in his luchador tights, and damn if it didn’t sneak-attack my brain the other day. Picture this: I’m crawling along the freeway, soul-crushing traffic turning my car into a rolling therapy

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  • Morning came like a pothole at sixty miles an hour—sudden, jarring, and hard to blame on anyone specific. The rooster down the road, probably unionized by now, took turns with his feathery co-conspirators alerting the neighborhood that the sun had clocked in. Matt rolled from his stomach onto a suspiciously angled hip and blinked at

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  • Stop Looking—Just Know

    “My father never spoke in parables, but his hands told stories clearer than any sermon. In wood, he found truth. In silence, understanding.” The sander thrummed in my grip, its vibration crawling up my forearm like a pulse, like memory. Mahogany dust hung in the warm air, rich and sharp, smelling of patience, of near-perfection,

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  • Visitation Hours with Icarus

    for my son, who flew toward his own sun It’s always been a sin, hasn’t it?To want too much.To hope.To leave.To stay. The days with you—man once a boywaiting for eggs I’d scramblelike penance,as the toaster hummed its tired absolution,those mornings are rosaries now,threadbare prayersslipping through guilty hands. You make your own breakfastin a city

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  • Nose Dive to Glory: My Backyard Baseball Disaster

    —have you ever broken a bone? Picture this: a scrappy backyard baseball diamond, cobbled together by three siblings with big dreams and zero budget. First base? A sickly, half-dead plant wheezing in a faded terracotta pot, so heavy we nearly busted a gut dragging it into place. Bits of clay flaked off, sticking to my

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  • Memorial Day

    Memorial Day

    not just one day.. “The Walk Down Gravel”for Mr. Graham, Vietnam Veteran It’s Sunday.The grass glistens with dew—tiny glass beads strunglike prayers along every blade,hydrating the earthfor the coming summer heat. Across the street,Mr. Graham’s black trash can stands at attention—a quiet salute to the curb,ready for duty.Only, it’s not trash day. Tuesday is the

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  • Act One: Chemo

    Act One: Chemo

    The last live performance I saw didn’t have curtains or spotlights—just an office, a boss, and a pathological liar with mascara and crocodile tears.

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  • The Garage Door Revolution (and How to Fight Back)

    “Community doesn’t disappear all at once—it just forgets how to say hello.” bb grey What do you do to be involved in the community? Start small. Smile. Make eye contact. Say hello. It sounds basic, but these days, it almost feels revolutionary. Somewhere along the way—probably while we were busy downloading the next app for

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  • Simon and the Fish

    Simon and the Fish

    It was always somethinguntil there was nothing. Simon lived the only life he knew—a dockworker with more days off than on,meeting ends in a mannernot unlike a politician:smiles,handshakes,promises made in passing,rarely kept. But he worked. He didn’t question,not even when he probably should’ve—like when Mable,his neighbor in the trailer park,asked for his last dime.She had

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  • Sleeping Bags and Redwood Skies

    Today’s writing prompt: Have you ever been camping? I woke up tucked inside a sleeping bag in the back of a 1974 Ford LTD station wagon — the original lowrider SUV, if you ask me. The back seats folded flat, creating a makeshift bunk where my six-year-old brother was snuggled to my right, and my

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