Kate Ryan

One of my biggest fears is having a random stranger ask me, "how it’s going?" They might as well ask if I’d like to step into their van and get murdered.

Is flagging potentially offensive material taking the PC movement too far?

Motherhood is easily the toughest, most sacred job on earth. Without moms, the human race simply wouldn’t be here. But personally, I’d rather dangle myself from dental floss over a volcano full of spiders than push another human being out of my body.

“You are the naked girl on horse, yes?” he said, approaching her table from across the café patio.

She couldn’t imagine the water she sat in, the water that enveloped her body, wanted to be here.

Like booster engines emptied of fuel, my limbs become disposable, useless tanks as the blood rushes from them.

My parents got the idea they’d send me to stay at my grandparents’ house in Florida for a week. I think my mother needed a week to herself.

Fresh orange juice, milk, thick slices of ham, a block of cheese, a carton of eggs—her husband kept it this way should this moment arrive.

A bloated mother in her polka dot one-piece gnaws on a corndog while reading the romantic pulp she picked up on her way out of the supermarket . . .

The birds abandon their posts in the pepper trees, sending tiny, oblong leaves raining to the ground.