Posts by Jennifer Dougan

  “You can’t go back there. There’s nothing there for you and nothing solid that you can hold on to there.” Pink twilight slips off four tall blue spruce trees. Yellow and tan houses blanch highlit and then fade to cool cream as the sun dips lower. Neighborhood noises are quiet but my mind is…

“Siri, text Mom…” and I rattle off a stream of sentences. The phone blinks yellow green at me and beeps, before reading aloud my words. A mix of garbled and legitimate phrases echo up to me from where the phone sits, untouched, in the car cup holder. I laugh at one translation of my thoughts…

It was as if I needed permission. Reaching out, I trailed fingers on blue velvet. My fingers flexed, tensed, cupping the top of the recliner, patting it in a shoulder pat I could no longer give to my dad. He used to sit right here. I glanced at the wide flat seat of the chair…

Sitting at the kitchen table, sipping fresh hot coffee, I watched them. Small silver snowflakes flew in from the south, flying right to left across my windows. My family and I cheered and immediately started humming Christmas music. Naked December lawns morphed white, and the wind blew harder. “It’s snowing!” we exclaimed to each new…

Salted caramel cream coffee sits sweet on my lips on a quiet Saturday. Snow rests on the drooping pumpkin family out front, and blue jays creep cautious to the seeds in the snow. Two families come to mind, three, actually. The first family’s farm is forty-five minutes away. Winding through tiny towns and wind-swept corn…

In the dark of night, I hear him. Jumping thuds of a one-legged boy hopping across the hall to the bathroom. Just three days in from my 12 year old breaking his foot, this is all still new to us. A Wednesday night game of Capture the Flag across a golden twilight-splashed church yard, and…