Karl is twelve years old, and he runs across the grass, body weightless, energy boundless, alive in a way that only a boy on the cusp of adolescence can be. It’s night in July, the country air cool but still humid, and his skin is coated with sweat. He’s in the front yard of his […]

Who’s to say why a man does what he does? Hunter Wilson was seven when his parents emigrated from New Zealand to the U.S., but he still remembered with nostalgia the wooly clouds of sheep that drifted across the emerald hillsides, hard work to care for, but what life doesn’t involve hard work? Hard work […]

A river wails. At noon, a heartbroken sky. Clouds above fight and break up, las nubes fall apart and so rain pours on a valley of Quito. Their white heavenly bodies unfold into the Machángara river, and el río gurgles and swallows the sky whole. It feeds off heartbreak, this river of shrieks. Quiteños who […]

1. A Ring And isn’t that sweet? Isn’t it just too perfectly sweet, like it’s a message of hope left for me and Alice, a blessing for our life together? I caught the ring with the edge of the broom as I was sweeping out the kitchen. It scraped along the tiles and made a […]