Family is a game of genetic roulette and mine taught me that Love is a threat

“Passage across the Miraji.” The man lifts the chondrite talisman hanging from his neck, and a radiant sliver of light crossing its edge nearly blinds me.

Kevin didn’t want to share a room with their mother. In the tiny house after the divorce, she said they didn’t have a choice.

Spring. Wood anemones opening their petals to greet the sunlight. Lesser celandines spangling the ground in constellations of yellow stars. And most magical of all, bluebells receding in an endless haze.

Something had eaten Jana’s chickens. She stood in the cold red dawn with the smell of blood and cypress sap rich in the air after rain, transfixed in horror.