Jeannie Dawn Coffman
Bio
Short fiction and prose shaped by real lives, memory, and the depths of human consciousness. Stories rooted in observation and lived experience.
Stories (14)
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I Was Never Supposed to Make It
From the outside, the house looked ordinary. The grass was cut. The porch was swept. Curtains hung neatly in the windows. If you drove past it, you would not slow down. You would not suspect anything unusual lived inside those walls.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman9 days ago in Chapters
I Was Never Supposed to Make It
The kitchen table was round and scratched, the kind of table that had absorbed years of elbows, spilled drinks, and unfinished conversations. A yellow light hung low above it, humming faintly. That hum is what I remember most. Not the math problem in front of me. Not the numbers I kept erasing.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman9 days ago in Chapters
I Was Never Supposed to Make It
I don’t remember the first home I lived in. I remember boxes. Not big ones. Not the kind people pack carefully when they’re moving toward something better. Small plastic bags. Trash bags sometimes. Clothes folded quickly. Toys missing pieces. My life was reduced to what could be carried. What I remember is the feeling of not staying long enough to belong anywhere.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman9 days ago in Chapters
The Second Place Setting
I still set two glasses on the table. It would look strange otherwise. The larger one goes on the right, where it always has. I polish it before placing it down, though no one comments anymore. The fork rests angled slightly inward. The napkin is folded twice, not three times. Precision keeps things steady.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman11 days ago in Fiction
What the System Calls Stability
The foster care system is built on the language of stability. Stability appears in case plans and court summaries. It is cited in meetings and written into reports. It is the word that signals progress — the goal toward which every placement and service is directed.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman12 days ago in Humans
"What We Leave for Each Other”
They did not speak anymore, but every morning the porch between their doors was used. By seven, one of them would place something there—a mug, a folded note, a piece of fruit set carefully on a napkin. Nothing was announced. Nothing was explained. The object was never the same twice, but it always appeared in the same place, aligned with the seam between the boards as if that line still mattered.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman19 days ago in Fiction
“What Changed When I Heard the Words”
The name didn’t suddenly explain everything. It didn’t organize my emotions or make them smaller. But it shifted the way I looked back. Moments I had labeled as overreactions began to take on shape. Patterns I once thought were personal failures revealed themselves as responses I had been navigating without context.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman20 days ago in Psyche
“Procedures for the Retention of Personal Effects”
1.1 All personal effects must be surrendered upon intake. Items will be collected prior to assignment and reviewed for compliance with current retention standards. Effects discovered after intake will be processed retroactively without notice.
By Jeannie Dawn Coffman22 days ago in Fiction
