"The cost of miscarriage was two thousand four hundred sixty-eight dollars and seventy-six cents. It was outlined on the Explanation of Benefits Annie received in the mail from the insurance company, written in twelve-point Garamond font..."

The Cost of Miscarriage

"In the ninth grade, I learned that you say “hanged” and not “hung” when describing the way the boy down the street died by suicide."

The Boy Down the Street Dies by Suicide

"You lifted fallen timbers onto muscle-tensed shoulders, a familiar dent creased into the space between neck and shoulder so that even when you weren’t carrying a log, the silhouette of a ghost tree was perched atop your too-tall, too-lean frame."

Anti-Heroin Chic

"Through the book-sized window, the circling planes blink in the sky like lightning bugs at dusk. The earth below is speckled with baseball diamonds and a grid of twinkling houses with streets painted diagonally."

Flying Into Chicago at Sunset

"There is no calm within the skull of a mother, its cranium hard, not spongy like the woodpecker’s. The anxieties rattle within its frontal lobes. Peck, peck, peck."

anniemarhefka

Selected work