William Reagan

They say you can’t capture the Grand Canyon in a picture. A photograph puts borders on something boundless, puts edges on the infinite. You may take a beautiful photo of the Grand Canyon, but it will never contain the everything that’s just outside the viewfinder. What a photograph can do is trigger a small, controlled detonation in your memory that shakes loose the sensual experience that accompanied the click of the shutter. In the case of the Grand Canyon, the searing heat of the Arizona Read more [...]

  My guess is her parents liked knocking boots to Fleetwood Mac. They probably say her name was inspired by a Welsh legend or queen of something, but that’s just revisionist history made up by aging hippies who don’t want to be seen as having once been deeply entwined with popular culture. Not that I've met her parents, but knowing Rhiannon, I bet that’s true. Rhiannon thinks everything that’s popular is bad. I’ve never really understood that attitude. Obviously, the two overlap sometimes Read more [...]

  He knew something was wrong. He just didn’t know what. Unfortunately, figuring out the what has never been one of his strong suits. Lucy certainly had seemed happy with the ring, which was good, because he’d taken the jewelry store radio advertisement’s advice that he should spend two months salary on her ring, a feat that would have been easier if he’d somehow been able to stop paying for food and rent and electricity for those same two months. She seemed to be happy with the people Read more [...]

  He’d stopped counting the days. As the number crept up into the 20s, then the late 20s, the expressions of the people he told were less sympathetic and more surprised, even incredulous at his specificity, so he stopped being so specific. Of course, he was still counting the days, he just wasn’t telling anyone. Today was 33. He knew there was an unwritten statute of limitations on heartbreak, and he didn’t want to be that guy, the one who turned everything into a sob-story memory. Montage Read more [...]

  Considering Hannah’s history with the word memento, it was unfortunate that this fumbling, flirt – did he say Dan? Don? – not only used the word, but pronounced it with excessive enunciation. Hannah couldn't think of the word without some sort of caveat coming to mind — a red line scratched through it, a hurried swirl of red around it, a block-letter correction in the margin. She'd misspelled it for years, never figuring out a mnemonic for remembering it, or at least never remembering Read more [...]

Joan had given Uncle Bob the camera four hours earlier. He hadn’t been their first choice for photographers, but when the hired photographer twisted his knee while taking the wedding party pictures at Sunset Park and needed Uncle Don to take him to the emergency room, Joan’s photographer criteria changed. No one in the wedding party had time to be the photographer, and Joan didn’t trust most of her relatives to take photos during an open bar. When she and David arrived at the Ramada, she Read more [...]

What frustrated Erin most was that nobody believed her story. They might pretend to, maybe give a nod or an exaggerated “Ahhhh, what a bummer,” but she could tell by the way they kept looking that they were really listening for chinks in the narrative, scanning for evidence to support their suspicion. Some people didn’t even try to be subtle, looking at her with a raised eyebrow or cocked head, silently inviting her to drop the ruse and reach out for help. “Seriously,” she’d repeat, Read more [...]

  As they packed their dirt-infused gear back into their respective cars, Lu and Kyle heard Jeremy’s curse and looked over to see him holding his arms pleadingly to the sky, a small black package in one of the outstretched hands. He turned to them — “It had fallen between the seat and the door. I can’t believe I missed it.” He was talking about the camera. He had been talking about the camera all weekend. The camera he had searched for before they left the cars at the parking lot and Read more [...]

I know you. I’ve known you my whole life. You’re as common as vanilla, yet you consider yourself the freshest flavor at the ice cream store.The label for your bin should read, “Stale.” No one buys you. You sit in the back of the classroom and make stupid faces. Your one-liners are one-dimensional, and would receive the same atrocious grades as your pencil-written term paper that names the Mayflower as Columbus’ boat. You call it a boat. You mistake the nervous, uncomfortable Read more [...]

Allie, I have a hundred pictures of Portland, and another hundred pictures of bridges. Hell, I bet I have a dozen pictures of different Voodoo donuts and I don’t have one picture of you. That hasn’t been accidental. C’mon, let me take a photo of you. No. Are worried if I take a photo I’m going to steal your soul? Honey, I’ve seen your photos. You don’t capture much soul. Hey! You just said you have a dozen pictures of donuts. I rest my case. I hope you aren’t Read more [...]