Welcome

Why stories? A story is the most universal narrative, told by everybody around the world. We all lean forward when somebody says let me tell you about the time when, we wait for the and then, and we watch the story unfold in our mind's eye. We see him crouched there, hear her voice, feel the stroke of the cat against our leg, hold our breath when the door creaks. Stories are words at their most powerful. Stories make us laugh, cry, sweat, hold our breath, fall in love, and remind us of the infinite ways we are human. Nobody is too young or too old for a story.

These stories are short—pocket stories—a title inspired by the Beatrice Schenk de Regniers poem “Keep a Poem in Your Pocket.” I write more stories than poems, but some of them are as short as poems so I offer them here because (paraphrasing de Regniers), if you keep a story in your pocket and a picture in your head, you’ll never feel lonely at night when you’re in bed.

I’ll begin with the first pocket story I wrote, not because it’s my favorite, but because it appeared first and reminded me of the magic of telling a story. Sometimes a story appears already formed, just waiting for you to add a detail or two, do a little jiggling, until it clicks into place. That's what happened with "Snow Angels."

Thank you for listening.