One night in my mid-teens, I was under the covers in my sister’s bedroom, deep asleep, while flames spread from a nearby candle.

“Put on your winter coat and get a warm blanket,” I told my daughter. “We’re going out to look at Christmas lights.”

February 3, 1946. Rain pounded the railcar’s roof. Karl felt as if inside a drum. A stuffy drum, smelling of wet wool and unwashed bodies.

This couch was made for grownups, vintage grownups of the 1930s, cinch-waisted female grownups and men who wore hats and drank martinis.

Writers’ processes differ, but here’s my truth: Writing is hard and I hate it; revision is easy, and I want to take it to the movies, then get to third base.

Autofiction is technically new, but now it’s been identified as a trend—like cat eyeliner then or wearing winter white. When the masses catch on, is it no longer cool?

After making the one hundred mile drive with my daughter for the Breast MRI appointment, she takes off to meet an old friend who is a medical student at the hospital.

Lately, as I’ve progressed from little walks around the living room to real walks around the block, the neighborhood seems to be different.

“I don’t expect you to remember me,” she says. The Atlanta bar is loud around us. She’s maybe late 30s, with dark hair and eyes, apple cheeks, a certain kind of defiance about the lips.

A porch swing sways, and the chains in the eyehooks screwed into the rafters let out their lazy creaks as if this is a day of rest for them, too. Or nearly so.