Kelly O’Keefe Practices Gratitude

Every morning when she first wakes up, before she even brushes her teeth, Kelly lies in bed and silently recites her gratitude litany. So many things to be grateful for.

Her laundry is less than a third of what it used to be, because Jack likes to change his clothes three times a day, which is the sort of bullshit thing one does when one doesn’t do their own laundry. Kelly can boil herself hardboiled eggs whenever the fuck she wants, without having to hear the word “sulphur.” They never got married, so Kelly doesn’t have to deal with paperwork to change her name back. That is, if she’d ever (in this hypothetical universe) change her name in the first place, which is unlikely, since Jack’s last name is Green, and “Kelly Green” sounds like a paint swatch. They never had a kid, despite discussing it ad nauseam, despite a few Hail Mary condomless nights, so she doesn't have to share custody with a selfish narcissist. At 39, she is probably too old to have kids, but she remembers that New York Times article about that study that found childless people are happier than people with children. And richer; they have more disposable income. Well, duh. And healthier; they live longer lives. Kelly is pretty sure she read all that, in the article.

Really, there are so many things to be grateful for! If Kelly just keeps repeating the litany every morning, no doubt it will (eventually) sink in.

Penny’s Phobias

It was a family joke, the bizarre fears of Penny, our younger daughter. Penny was afraid of rabies, and in particular of rabid bats. She was afraid of sneaker waves, which I blamed on my husband Daniel. Once, when Penny was five and we were all at Ocean Beach, Daniel pointed out a sign that said “Beware of Sneaker Waves.” Afterwards, Penny refused to go to the beach. I theorized it was the connotation of “sneaker,” sly and surreptitious. Penny wouldn’t have been nearly as afraid of “riptides,” I maintained, though Daniel argued “riptide” would have evoked a different negative reaction from Penny, because of the violence encapsulated in “rip.” Because she loved yogurt and didn’t know what she would otherwise eat for breakfast, Penny was afraid of becoming lactose intolerant. Once a teenager, Penny was afraid of being phobic; she feared she had mental health problems, or issues, or whatever people call them, these days. This made us consider whether we should stop teasing Penny about her phobias, though her older sister Sarah persisted, and said we were all being ridiculous. “Babying the baby,” Sarah accused. One thing Penny was not afraid of, surprisingly, was driving. Driving activated a confident and (in retrospect) reckless side of Penny. “You should write your college common app on your weird phobias,” Sarah suggested. Now Penny will never write such a college essay. “My sister,” Sarah said, in her eulogy, making us all smile and nod through our tears, “was an odd bird, and had many unusual phobias.” •





Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches at Mills College at Northeastern University. She is the author of the short story collection The Last Day (2026), published by Moon City Press; Don't Take This the Wrong Way (2025), co-authored with Michelle Ross, published by EastOver Press, and chosen as one of LitHub’s 100 Most Notable Books of 2025; the short story collection How Far I've Come (2022), published by Gold Wake Press; the novel The Light Source (2019), published by 7.13 Books; and the short story collection Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel.

Website | Twitter | Bluesky