Category: Short Works

My Summer in a Gospel Group We were a small Southern gospel group — more garage band than anything polished. A keyboardist who carried the…

View More Essay: Late One Summer

May 3, 1992 – April 5, 2001 Our Ray of Sunshine Here is my story about our daughter, Erica, and what it meant to love…

View More Erica Michelle Bayliss — A Life Remembered

Before I was born you knew me. You gazed on me with love and rocked me in the arms of hope.

View More Essay: God of Life

A short work about two confrontations—one involving steel, the other exposure—and what remains after the doors close.

View More Essay: Two Knives

A quiet, intimate short story exploring unconscious desire, marriage, and the subtle distance between two people sharing the same room.

View More Essay: The Ghost in Her Veins

I’m usually up before the sun rises. A cup of coffee sits beside me another quiet morning begins to take shape.

View More Essay: A Quiet Morning

An essay about work, authority, and the systems that continue operating regardless of consequence. Set during the winter of 1980, this piece examines obligation, pressure, and what arrives without explanation.

View More Essay: Winter, 1980

Shortly after I arrived, the placement agency that had sent me there called. They were apologetic. They told me they could reassign me immediately if I wanted out. I told them no. I would stay and complete the job.

View More Essay: A First Day I Won’t Forget

The web was still new then—not vastly public, not casual. Database-driven website connections were custom-built, expensive, and rare.

View More Essay: Connections

Most days, it was just the two of us. He was older than I was and knew the procedures by heart, the kind of person who respected every step because he understood what depended on it.

View More Essay: The Pilot Plant