Alicia Holmes
Alicia Shandra Holmes has published fiction in The Bitter Oleander, Rosebud, CRATE, Many Mountains Moving, and The Blue Earth Review. She was a resident at the Sanskriti Kendra cultural center in New Delhi, India, funded through the UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for Artists Programme, and the recipient of a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant for nonfiction. She has a background in newspaper journalism.
An excerpt from Alicia Holmes
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009The twins were born in the middle of the night in deepest winter in the northernmost town in Michigan. It was clear from the beginning that the girls were identical: matching black hair and pale skin and grayish-blue eyes. Even the way they cried, their tiny indistinguishable voices blending into a single subdued complaint that lacked the high-pitched wailing of most newborns.
That night the sky was expressionless (if you overlook the stars). It had a colorless blankness the twins would come to intimately know.
Their father had been a soldier who’d seen some of the world. A steadfast Catholic, he always attended daily Mass at the still-dark hour of 7 a.m. That morning he gazed at …
