My flash fiction piece went up today on Smokelong Quarterly as the first weekly story of 2016. This is my first fiction publishing credit in years so it feels extra special. Yay! A talented artist friend, Nia Andino, sketched the artwork. 

Here’s a excerpt: 

I was up in the plum tree when I saw him climbing over the piles of trash—plywood with rusted nails jutting out at weird angles, tires and license plates, bushes that pushed through all that trash. His face was twisted in concentration as he stepped gingerly over the hypodermic needles. I wondered how he’d learned to climb like that. I’d been doing it for so long, it was natural to me. But him? Ramon wasn’t a climbing-over-trash kind of boy. He was always well dressed, shoes spotless, pants with a sharp crease down the middle, collar crisp and white. Me? I always had scuffs on my shoes. I stared down at my legs and picked at a scab on my knee. I had scars up and down my shins from climbing that plum tree in my backyard. There he was beneath me, looking up at me. That’s when I noticed the brown paper bag he was carrying.

Read the entire piece here.