one hundred story #37: Imperfect

It's all so gorgeous, the grass perking up as the sun peeks over the horizon, that first brush of light across your cheeks quenching a thirst you didn't know you had. It's too much, the perfection of a morning when songbirds and antelope and jackrabbits are all out there, alive, lungs lurching and legs loping. Even though you're still here, she isn't. The worst part is that first morning after she’s gone, your eyes are heavy with her, the air parched. This need, it makes you thirsty. And still the sun, the songbirds, the antelope, the jackrabbits, are not enough.

one hundred word story #36: Social Network

Name: Gracie Johnson. Age: 22. Studies at: Western Career College. Major: Undeclared. Interested in: Men. Relationship Status: It’s Complicated – with Marisa McGee. Sex: Yes, please. Lives in: Phoenix, AZ. From: Schenectady, NY. Favorite Movies: Twilight, The Shining. Employer: Forever 21. Religious Views: Spiritual. Political Views: Pastafarian. Favorite Quotations: “All morons hate it when you call them a moron.” –J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye. “I am literally horny with fear.” – Sue Sylvester, Glee. About Gracie: I like cherry vanilla Coke and potbellied pigs. I have a dog named Freud (the u was accidental). I feel like I know you already.

one hundred word story #35: So nice

You don’t mind, do you? She asks, her fork hovering over my cake. Mind if I get a ride home? She asks, mouth full. My date walks by. Hey hot stuff! She shouts. Wanna dance? He glances my way. That cool? She says, not really asking. I mind their coats and wallets. When the song ends, she gestures for my chair. Bad knee, she says. You’re so nice, she says. Isn’t she nice? It isn’t until we’ve carried her up the steps to her apartment, until her door has shut behind her, that I remember her wallet. She won’t mind.

one hundred word story #34: Party Line

The unmarried woman on the block began fielding mysterious calls from a Frenchman. The party line crackled to attention. When their conversations swerved out of English, the ladies listening in assumed the worst—no one else on the block spoke French. The ladies cut each other off, some in English, some in Yiddish, sometimes saying the same thing, sometimes not. And then: a thin, restrained question. “What is my life to you—a party?” The line went silent for a full minute, quiet enough to hear glasses clinking. And then: French, less plaintive this time, followed by a gentle click.

one hundred story #32: Superwoman

This morning, while running through frost, my toe clipped the curb and I flew. I remembered my last fall—the unnatural way my wrist flung toward my heart. The way dead cells collected underneath the plaster cast. I remembered all the trips and falls, scabs and scrapes. Today I soared: arms outstretched like warnings, head cocked like a trigger. When I hit the concrete there was no thud, no smack, no break. I sat in my bruises, the sidewalk cold with morning. My muscles had been trained; instincts rewritten. I considered the rooftops, the sky, then took my running start.

one hundred word story #31: Like

Basically he’s all, I like you, and literally she’s like, are you kidding? And basically he says that like is just a word, right, like is that random space between I don’t know you yet and I’d really like to, you know, like you. So then she’s all, that’s creepy, and basically I don’t go out with people I don’t know, and even though I know you, I don’t think I want to, you know, like you. Like that. You’re likable, but you’re literally not my kind of guy. He’s like, that’s so random. No, she says, it really isn’t.

one hundred word story #30: Jack-o'-lantern


Cassie puts the pumpkins next to her door, their smiles broken with missing teeth. When the witches and werewolves and Harry Potters knock on her door, Cassie’s bowl is empty. The astronauts and Wonder Women pout, refuse her boxed raisins and green apples. Hours later, her driveway is draped in toilet paper. The next morning she spots Milky Way wrappers littered around the pumpkins, their faces buttery. How could you, she starts, stops. Notices the peony looks peaked, the ground parched. Compost, she says, but when she reaches for them, the pumpkins bare their new teeth, whispering “Trick or treat.”

one hundred word story #29: current events

"Don't think I will give this to my son," the bank clerk said, propping the rifle against his boot. The son smiled and the reporter thought he knew why. The night was ripe with adrenaline. Blood spilled like good milk. They say that for hours the men chanted “keep him alive,” hoping, as some soldiers do, that blow by blow lives can be rebuilt, lies undone. But the boy was too used to loud sounds and closed doors. He imagined the new sounds, the fresh milk. The horizon was orange with a new kind of fire. They kept themselves alive.

one hundred story #28: workshop

It’s a relationship of subordination, one poet says to another. She—the speaker – expresses guilt, see, and he—the listener—demands something. Money, maybe, sex. No, says another student, what we have here is a special form of tenderness. What throws me, says the teacher, is the penguin—what’s he doing here? What do you mean, he? Asks another. The writer, the guilty one, stays quiet, her icebox hidden. They are blind to her visible parts but still they spear her to the page. She considers prostration in all its poetic forms, though her wings stay close to her chest.

The dog named Dog



My aunt April shared this with me tonight and it gives me great pleasure.

Women my age are starting to have babies and I end up learning a lot about biological clocks. I have one too, but it ticks for border collies and golden retrievers. Babies might happen sometime too, but I wonder, could they get their goggles off their own heads? These are things to think about.

one hundred story #27: perspective

We're in her bed and we're both crying, she because her fingers hurt when she plays the piano, me because I've already lost one grandmother and am afraid to lose another, and she's so small there in the bed, no makeup on, window wide open like her arms. And then: a fart, a tremendous jolt of energy that shakes us up, giggling, gets us remembering that we're both still here, lying in her bed watching the full moon grow smaller in the sky. I am still at it, alternately crying and laughing, until long after I have descended the stairs.

one hundred word story #26: bilingue

Érase una vez you understood it all, lo que decían. There was a time cuando you could eavesdrop facilmente, when riding the bus era una lección en listening. You remember el sonido of the monkeys calling roll until late at night, the smell of café con leche simmering por la estufa. You stall when you can’t think of the right word in your native tongue. You question what makes it “native.” Y sometimes the words arise in dreams, your subconscious recordando lo que you forgot. It’s a certain manera de ser. Repeat after me: que practiques. Que no te olvides.

one hundred word story #25: breathe

You can't help considering her shoes. The careful way the flowers are arranged on the counter. The recipe card pinned to the stove, those telltale loping cursive letters. And then there's that smell. What is it, cinnamon and cookie dough and starch? You walk in the house and it follows you down the hall, past the needlepoint, beyond the framed photographs of your parents and hers. You used to think it was unshakable, but you worry now, what if it, too, fades? Can you replicate it, memorize it? Did she leave a recipe? Fill your lungs. It is there somewhere.

On mourning

My grandmother died and I went to the carwash. It didn’t feel right driving out to her house in a dirty car. I gave the man behind the counter eight dollars and put the engine in gear. The automatic wash invited us in with its mechanical arms. I liked the way they washed without asking permission, the way the whole contraption cradled me inside the car, didn’t let me go. Once inside I turned the car off as the spray cycle started. The water was so loud on the windows, against the roof, that I couldn’t hear the street outside. The soap dripped down in even lines and the world was momentarily white. The car was my cocoon. The bird shit and seeds and yellow pollen that had stuck so goddamn tight to the windshield began to flake and peel off. The car was shedding. I was dry inside but really I was molting, little cells of memory stripping off my arms and legs with every shot of water. The last time I saw her, and that gap between her clavicle and her shoulder, and the time I laughed so hard at a wedding that she had to kick me to keep herself from laughing too, and the day so many years ago when she defended me in front of her friend, saying I was old enough and mature enough to be trusted to hold the family pictures, and the look on her face when she said, “I hope they can help you, too, Julia,” and that gasp of mock surprise whenever a grandkid stole a chocolate chip cookie or failed to pass the right card in pinochle. I wanted to stay in the wash cycle longer than the time allotted, but then the green arrows blinked and the voice said, pull forward now, and I wasn’t ready but the hot air vents had already started. The bubbles of water were being forced across the windshield and I could tell they didn’t want to go. The glass was crisp and nice.

I didn’t want to leave but the voice started again. The car rolled forward and the wheels were slick. The sun was too hot, the light too glaring. Sometimes things move before they’re really ready to. It was hard to get out of the car 30 miles later in front of a house that no longer had my grandmother in it. I just kept staring at the birdfeeder on the lawn and the lemon tree with green lemons. But at least my car was clean.

one hundred word story #24: first day

You know it's the first day because eighteen-year-olds are driving on the bike paths and cops are escorting girls in skirts back to campus. You know it’s the first week because you can hear them chanting from your third-story office window. You get the sense that the kind of learning that’s going on isn’t the kind of learning that is written in books. You are supposed to teach them but it’s hard when you remember how important it all felt, befriending roommates and getting lost in buildings. Too many firsts. Enjoy them, you say, because you’ll only get them once.

Meet Andrew


The first time I met Andrew, I was visiting my boyfriend Ryan, who teaches high school English in San Jose. The holidays were upon us and Andrew was sporting a colorful Christmas sweater. Ryan had told me that this was the guy who kept him sane through grading season, his partner in lesson planning and what he called "off-site collaboration," before adding "oh, and he's diabetic too," as an afterthought.

Andrew also teaches English, is an avid reader and writer, and coaches volleyball. This summer he married his high school sweetheart, Beth, who is also a teacher. Andrew is also a type 1 diabetic, diagnosed around the same time I was--while still in high school. He occasionally has diabetic students in his classes. This weekend he agreed to share some more reasons to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I especially love his idea that a diabetes cure is within reach. Hey, it could happen.

Until then, we'll take all the support we can get. Team Malibu Pumpers will be taking the state capitol by storm on Sunday, October 2. If Andrew's words inspire you, take a peek at our fundraising page. Thanks again, Mr. Christian.