Photo Source: Pixabay By the end of summer my teeth are barely strong enough to crack a peppermint in two. My jaw strains, venomous pain shooting through my molars. My husband glances over with pity. “You need to wait,” he tells me, “It isn’t even September.” I swear, the cold comes later every year. Languorous and sweating, I lie on the couch and suck on ice cubes. I must not crunch them, no matter my desires. I’ve been injuring myself all summer, chewing on ice and candies and uncooked...

Photo Source: Flickr I made myself late to work crouching on the sidewalk in front of the fire station, queasily trying to discern the identity of a baffling object: a cardboard-flat, grey Rorsarch test of possibilities. Like an optical illusion inverting itself, the image came clear. The four blobs protruding from the distorted margins were paws, and the arc of the tail could be discerned by the sparse hairs that clung to the dried flesh. Any sign of the head was lost in the ballooning of...