Part of the Seabrook, Texas landscape is a man called "Slim". He's tall and thin with white whiskers, usually walking alongside or riding his bicycle; a local bike shop gives him a new one every year.

When I was working at the local Dairy Queen in the early 80's, Slim would stop in weekly to eat whatever my boss, Lorne, would give him for either sweeping the floor or taking out the trash. Slim occasionally tried to converse with me or the friendly alcoholics who stopped by DQ…

I can feel a person's mind/soul in a painting or essay, a photograph they're in or connected to, an inanimate object they've touched or a song.

The feeling can be so strong for these minds I sometimes hardly know that suddenly their essence envelopes and inspires me to speak out loud to an otherwise empty room, "I love you."

It makes no sense.

I've felt this love when reading the words of those long dead…

Dear Jenny,

Thank you so much for the thoughtful gift of colorful dildos. I wasn't aware they could be made of glass! The rainbow colors were splendid, and I'm sure these would quickly get me "over-the-rainbow", if you know what I mean (I don't know that I really needed six, but maybe you were just celebrating the "6" thing, you know, this website - clever girl).

I had to erase the picture you posted on my 6S wall because I…

My mother moved through the main corridor of St. Teresa's Orphanage like the quintessential earth mother of all children. "Do you want to see my woom?" Sanford asked her over the many small voices competing for attention, "Come and see my woom!"

She'd brought me with her this day in 1971 to witness another one of her reckless urges; before I knew it we were signing papers to take Sanford home with us for the weekend, a transaction similar to checking out a…

Faith looked at a bare wall in the exam room as I positioned her for x-rays, her piercing eyes staring into a world I couldn't see - my future. She said that I would be working elsewhere soon, buying a new house and that "the trouble you have with your neck is from a childhood car accident."

She told me that a friend with dark hair would betray me, and that the reason I often felt the presence of my mother was because "she's here".

If that weren't enough, she…

She didn't smell awful but I could tell Faith needed a bath as she entered the room and pulled a blue and white Medicaid form out of the back pocket of her faded blue jeans. She'd come for additional mammogram views due to a suspicious finding and I wondered as I wrote her name why so many lost souls are labeled Faith and Hope.

Her long hair was almost entirely gray which might have made her look older than 48 if her eyes hadn't been so piercing blue, like…

A wall divided my private work area from the room where I x-rayed patients to create a personal space to sort their films and store my belongings - a purse, books in a backpack, sometimes a journal.

After Vera's x-rays were complete, she asked me about my kid's pictures in the room who were still little and suddenly being raised by a single mom, "Why did you do it, get married and go domestic? It didn't work out because that's not who you are."

Vera knew nothing of my…

Teresa's 10,000 square-foot dream was completed along St. Augustine Beach in 2015, a white plantation style with black shutters and a porch that ran fully around both levels so its frequent guests could lose themselves in the roaring lisp of the Atlantic ocean.

The house had twelve bedrooms decorated in various themes, some with a water view, and each was additionally equipped with a desk, office supplies, laptop, coffee maker and full bathroom.

There were other…

Mark considers the words, "dressed carefully" as he now stands naked before the mirror.

There are funerals to dress for, doctor's appointments, dates, parties, job interviews and his own secret missions.

Clothes reveal an inner state or sometimes lie: I am the color of death, I am a well-assembled version of health, I am desirable, I am happy, I am competent and successful, I am other.

Women fuss for hours over…

Dalael slept with a loaded gun under her pillow for the first two weeks after, then spent the next year mourning the loss, an ambiguous loss. She avoided getting into elevators if she didn't feel comfortable with the faces looking back at her. She checked the locks on the windows and doors of her apartment at least four to five times each night before lying in the same bed where the ancient violence occurred, its legacy a ubiquitous haunt in the minds of victims - a word she hated…

Nanny was buried in Rosehill Cemetary yesterday.  Her cat, twenty-one year old Sam is writhing on top of the ceremony guestbook as if he understands she's gone forever.

In her red journal she wrote in shorthand two weeks ago: Just another damn day."

The doctors say she died of congestive heart failure, but I think Nanny's heart was just broken from disappointment, from the path her daughter took, then add to that the cigarettes, high blood pressure, and…

I am eleven and sitting in a dark narrow trailer full of cool air rushing up my nose.  The trailer smells like Estee Lauder perfume and Eve cigarettes. The a/c vents in the floor are like ice because my sixty year old grandmother is hot-natured.  Her short wavy brown hair is about half gray at the temples, combed back and glued with sweat.  She wears shorts and strapless tops this time of year.  "And barely survive," she says.

I'm here for a month this summer to spend time…

Nanny chews her mouthfuls of rhubarb pie slowly, one of her green eyes looking into mine while the other strays off toward the front door of the narrow trailer; I remind myself to always look into her left eye.

"This is good," I say, choking down another bite of pie, not knowing what the hell rhubarb is and hoping I can scatter around the remaining bits and claim I'm full.

Nanny places her plate on the small round table between us, rises and leans…

The cream-colored business card says in emerald green print: INTERLUDES, Specializing In ~Private Nude Modeling ~Domination ~Fantasy ~Couples ~Private Party. The card says they're open Monday through Saturday (honoring the Sabbath) from 10 am - 5 am.

Located on the Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas, this is where "Kat" worked after leaving a medical career. She was 34 when I met her at MacGregor Medical in 1992, an x-ray technologist, exotically beautiful with a hot…

A playground dedication took place at a local preschool and there was a "blessing" involving holy water; two extra bottles were sent home with my children and I don't know what to do with them.

A few days later, a plea for money came from a Catholic organization called Food For The Poor, Inc.; enclosed with the plea was a necklace with a medal of St. Catherine Laboure' attached (24 year-old novice of the Daughters of Charity who received a "vision" of the "Blessed Virgin Mary"…

There was a black upright piano on the back wall of the dining room where my mother and I prepared for a church performance that never happened.

For hours we practiced, me slowing her down as I could always get as far as From the dust of the earth/God created man but faltered beyond that.

The practice was satisfying on its own, me getting lost in her warmth as she guided my helium-pitched voice through tough harmony parts. She reminded me patiently of…

The small clapboard house at 3228 E. Crenshaw Avenue is dilapidated but still standing, a purchase from my grandfather in 1963 for $5,700, but the white picket fence was removed long ago.

Sometimes I dream that I'm standing on the cement square porch flanked by skinny antebellum-style columns, my hand hesitating on the knob of the heavy front door.  The original door was full of small square windows lined up like neat pairs…

I was startled awake as our heavy front door swung open hard, hitting the wall where it was hinged. My mother stumbled through the door; right past me she lurched, blouse buttoned lopsided, frosted hair knotted. She made it to our yellow kitchen without seeing me.

I tiptoed behind her and from the doorway watched her smudged form sway at the counter as she held a match to the nozzle of her nose-spray bottle to make its opening larger. Her hands were shaking, causing the…

A question on a school form asked whether my young son is Hispanic or White and I quite honestly didn't know (I'm many things, and my husband is Hispanic); the tellers in the drive-thru of my local bank have their name plates in the window: Nasima, Nouha and Feesa, one of them perhaps a woman I found forcing herself to vomit up the pork she unwittingly ate in a breakfast taco (I "counseled" her in a grocery store bathroom next to the bank, telling her it wasn't her fault if the…

On the coffee table in my childhood living room was an old family Bible, large and leather-bound with a picture on the cover depicting a scene I can't recall; within the pages were loose sheets of paper upon which were neatly-written birth, marriage and death dates of family members, some dried flowers of unknown origin, and light brown wisps of my baby hair sealed in plastic wrap.

The pages were gold…