Sometimes when I’m walking the trail in the early morning dark I’ll sense motion and realize there’s a large deer crossing my path. Dawn said there’s been coyotes attacking people in Bellevue and I should carry a cudgel. Maybe a… Read More ›
Creative Nonfiction
The algorithm remembers
It’s an ungodly hour, 4 am. Even the heat hasn’t come on yet so it’s just me and the coffee maker, the odd mechanical sounds of the house idling. But I love this time in the dark to sit with… Read More ›
Come on Eileen
Now in this corner of the night it is all quiet save for the sound of music coming from the end of the hall. A song from the 80s with a fiddle, a song they played while Lily was visiting…. Read More ›
The better together speech, 1984
The way the clouds pass across the sky and stretch like see-through gauze through my window. Stretching back to another time. Stumbling onto the stage and crossing it as a 14-year-old. Dropping my speech, the papers scattering across the floor,… Read More ›
My prayer for you
Patches of snow in the foothills on a bleak morning in March. It is your first week sober. You’ve been a daily drinker for 20 years now and this is the longest you’ve gone since you can remember. It is… Read More ›
Self-updating systems
I folded myself back into the routine of work. I hadn’t billed a full 40 hours since last July, eight months. What did Lily mean when she said she disassociated? I sometimes got flickers of that and liked it. It… Read More ›
One more wish
That was it. Sometimes I could see how the rest of my life would play out by the way it was going day by day. We watched the sequel to Dune, that world’s lore, the large underground worms and the… Read More ›
Birth, rebirth
That janky toilet seat always leaned left, the toilet paper holder too. In the early morning the body signaled what it would feel like later in life. Early morning or late night it was hard to tell which was which,… Read More ›
Portrait of a snowman with dead grass for hair
All this snow lying around still, like frosting on a gingerbread house. At the park when it’s still dark walking a path between the setting moon and rising sun. Bit by bit the snow receded, leaving splotches of black stains… Read More ›
First Saturday in Washington
No moon at 3 AM but twinkly stars and lawns covered in white, the failing charge of the solar-powered footpath lights made a weak ghostly hue. Had to look up “what to do about itchy scalp” and wondered, could it… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 