Kristine E. Brickey

       In my dream, we are all sitting together around the outside fire pit, flames casting orange flickers of light and shadow across the faces of the people I love. Marshmallows burst into flame, fiery torches of sticky deliciousness, carefully blown out and stuffed into laughing mouths before the next fluffy morsel is pokered and set over the embers. Memories are shared, denied, blamed on his sister, her brother, the wind, and laughed off as the next tale is told.        In my dream, I sit quietly watching them all, but focusing on two. I see their faces, one on the verge of manhood and the other solidly there. I note their similarities, wonder how my son might have evolved into the man my brother had become.        In my dream, I know it is only a dream. That came with time, with years of dreams that left me panicked, trying to fight my way back to them upon waking.      Over the years of without, I’ve learne...

There was so much work to be done on the inside of the house, that for three full weeks I barely slept, tore out carpet and staples, scrubbed and painted and painted and painted. My hands became claws, shaped to fit the brush. When the moving truck left, I was beyond exhausted, excited to pick up my kids from their summer weeks with their dad, ready to be done with work for awhile. However, just outside the front door of our new home, a nasty old cedar bush sprawled. Blocking the sun from the lilacs, my daughter and I knew it had to come down. We love lilacs, and the dark, sweet blooms, yet just a promise for late June, would need more sun to reach full potential. Katie, almost a senior, a tomboy raised by a tomboy, my mini-me, insisted she wanted to chop it. No chainsaw allowed. “We need a hatchet, Ma.” Did we though? I wondered. My friends and I often joked about our exes, about not being allowed to own hogs or rent chippers. I was certain a hatchet would be included on the list of d...