Published Short Stories, Essays, and Poetry
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The Garden
He will never fully recover. He will always be sick and he will always be weak from the disease, Doctor Johnson told my father in that cold outpatient room of our local hospital. He would have to try to build a new life for himself. Comfort and daily joy came from watering his blooming garden in a single corner of our backyard with the green rubber hose, which was old and leaked in every direction. The flowers and plants were high as our crooked fence, and their roots entangled our soil. The patch of square soiled ground was filled with…
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Creation by Destruction
A great poet once wrote we are created by being destroyed. If this is true than my mother has been created more than once in her lifetime. In fact, mother has been created so many times by destruction that she probably holds a special spot in the honorary “created by being destroyed” club. Mother lost her father when she was sixteen because of a drunken joy ride on a scooter that led him straight into the side of a Walgreens. Could you imagine that? A drunken man riding a scooter and then sudden
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Silent Mother
Hot winds of sand and dirt blow across my hooves. Branches of trees shake and rustle against my slender face. My elongated neck sways left to right searching for my herd. I want to call out, but I’m mute. My My round growing belly begins to ache with pain. Kicking from my insides. Sleep is not a priority. All I can think of, water. Herd senses pain and watch as my one destiny that I have waited for begins. I put my head next to hers and clean her dry. Mewing, mewing, mewing. Only sound sh
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100 Years of St. Augustine Shrimping History
Imagine taking a stroll along the seawall and witnessing vast flocks of seagulls swarming over incoming shrimp boats like bees to honey. This is a sight reminiscent of the days when shrimping was king in St. Augustine. By the late 1940’s, shrimping ranked as the fourth largest industry in St. Johns County. Until recently, this era was recalled only by fishermen and local fishing families.
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Nutritious Comfort
I remember the smell of it, Nana‘s kitchen during the cool fall nights Smell of clean, crisp, crunchy fibrous fruit whose skin snapped like sticks when bitten. Blood red candle flickering in the darkness. Flame dancing upon the wick.
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Gone, Daddy, Gone
Dad, it’s been one year since you died. And this past year, I’ve had to go through violent battles for emotional stability inside my head because of it. These confrontations have destroyed who I once was. The Bethany you loved and kissed goodbye with your thick mustache tickling my skin as you pulled away from our embrace, is gone. The strong young woman who could take on anything wedged in her way, has become a crumpled-up shell of a human being who cowers in the corner, afraid of even the smallest inconvenience. Bethany has been replaced with someone I’m unfamiliar…
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Love, Without the Ashes
I come from a long line of women who held their pain quietly, who carried too much and asked for too little. Irish women. Women with too many kids, too little money, too much grief. Women who smoked through the storm, who buried sorrow beneath casseroles and silence. Women who waited for bad news in kitchens filled with cigarette smoke and folded it into their days like laundry. Women who clenched their jaws and passed down trauma like heirlooms. I was raised by one of them. My mother never dran…
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Exit Wound
The night the sirens came, my mother was labeling leftovers.She used blue painter’s tape and a black marker that bled through plastic.Rice-Monday. Chicken-Tuesday.She pressed each lid twice, firm, like she could seal time inside the refrigerator. Outside, cicadas rattled in the palms and the air smelled faintly of salt and wet asphalt.When the sirens started, she did not look up.“Probably a wreck on US One,” she said.I stood at the sink with my hands in dishwater gone cloudy with grease.
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Gone Too Soon
“Before the film begins, I want to tell you a story,” I’d say, standing at the library podium, the lights dimmed, the audience hushed. The screen behind me glowed with the still image of a young James Dean, half in shadow. I always spoke before the opening credits rolled—five, maybe ten minutes—just long enough to introduce the actor, to share something they’d never forget. Something that would cling to them long after the final scene. “When James Dean was nine, his mother died of cancer. Her body…
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Alligators Don’t Blink
The first thing you learn growing up near the glades is that stillness is a kind of power. Not quiet. Not hiding. Just the stillness of an alligator, belly pressed into the mud, eyes watching without ever blinking. They don’t have to flinch. They know they own the land.
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No Swimming at Monsons
All Ruth saw was more attention. And when the wrong kind of attention showed up, people like her paid for it. The June heat shimmered off the sidewalks, rising in waves that blurred the edges of palm trunks and lampposts. Humidity pressed against Ruth’s skin as she stepped out of the motel’s back corridor, the scent of salt from Matanzas Bay mingling with the sweetness of blooming jasmine. Her uniform clung to her back, damp before she’d even begun her rounds.
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Best Short Stories from the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest 2026
The sixteen best stories from the 2026 running of The Saturday Evening Post’s annual short fiction contest. Featuring my winning story, “No Swimming at Monson’s.”
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I Tell My Four Year Old ‘I Love You.’ She Has Never Once Said It Back.
My daughter Frankie doesn’t say my name. She knows it. I’ve heard her whisper it at night, curled up in her toddler bed, when the house is quiet and the shadows stretch across the floor. “Mommy,” she breathes, and for a second I believe I’ve dreamed it. At night, behind her door, she practices. Soft words slip out like secrets, as if she’s testing them before anyone can hear. Pressure shuts her down. But in the dark, when no one is watching, her voice feels safe. In the daylight, I try. I kneel. I call to her. She turns to…
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Reviews of New Food: Dr. Pepper Blackberry
It’s 1:17 a.m., and I’m sitting on the floor of my kitchen drinking Dr Pepper Blackberry out of the can like it’s medicine for a heartbreak I haven’t earned yet. I haven’t cried today, but I can feel it coming, crouched behind my molars. This beverage might be the gateway. The label promises “Delightfully Dark. Subtly Sweet,” which, coincidentally, is also how I described myself during a short-lived phase in college when I tried to brand myself as “the mysterious girl who reads Bukowski and wear…
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Volcano
It started with a palm frond. One of those thick, green giants that fan out over Florida yards like they own the place. My Uncle Bob ripped one clean off the tree, held it high over his head, and marched barefoot around the pool. Jimmy Buffett’s “Volcano” blared from the lanai speakers, steel drums skipping over sun-soaked chaos. Kids doing cannonballs, adults sloshing bourbon in plastic cups, and bathing suits doubling as dinner clothes. He said nothing. Just grinned and kept moving. We followed. Every one of us. Cousins dripping pool water, aunts in cover-ups, and the dogs trotting at…
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Drug Experiences | Readers Write
WHEN I WAS five years old, my elementary school held an assembly that included a special visitor, Harry the Habit Kicker. (Harry was actually our school resource officer in a giant bear costume.) He wore a shirt that read SAY NO TO DRUGS, and he carried a white bag with BAD STUFF scrawled across it. Harry demonstrated the consequences of drugs by placing the bag into his mouth. We all watched in horror as he jumped around, waving his fuzzy arms frantically, then fell to the floor, dead.
