A Single Woman’s Guide to Loving Your Thirties*
The Arkansas Review (2007)
Assume that you will live until you’re at least 80. Think about the women in your family. Grandma Thomas is in her seventies. She’s doing fine. Try to reduce 29/80 into a smaller fraction. Fail. Decide that you will live until you’re 90. Round up and decide that you’re 1/3 of the way there. Tell yourself that you have plenty of time. Get Full Text
* Nominated for a Pushcart Prize
Dunes
Iron Horse Literary Review (2006)
“Lily, we’re going to be late,” Robert says. He paces nervously in front of the door and jingles our car keys in his hand. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “They’re always running behind anyway.” I slurp the leftover milk from my cereal bowl and place it on the coffee table. “I want to see what they’re going to say about the Dunes.” Get Full Text
Patient 231
The Pinch (2007)
They found them. Two of them. One with long black fingers. Yellow nails. I remember the nails. I’ll make you like it. Clinched wrists. The other. Cratered face like cottage cheese. Black pores. They found them. Get Full Text
Sometimes Canned Peas
The Indiana Review (2008)
Do it because she’s your husband’s mother. He’s talked with his brother, and they’ve decided that you’ll be perfect. At 56, you don’t have a job, really, in the technical sense of the word. Freelance writing, in the world of engineers and accountants, is not a real career. Get Full Text
The Hardest Science
Fiction Weekly (2008)
I met Drew at an art show I catered for the students he taught at the university. He asked me out, and I said yes because he seemed grounded, which I assumed made him a terrible artist, and because it had been a long time between offers. I said yes because I was over thirty in a town that recycled 19-year-olds. Get Full Text
Michelle Reed 