It was the summer of 1977. Son of Sam was stalking young couples.

It’s evening already / and the vibes are so off / it isn’t even funny. 

The nurse added that she hoped she had thwarted another outbreak of STDs, unlike their nursing home competitor in town.

The unknown boy, that uninvited new friend, showed his freckled face, sang a cumbia with us, and drank from our glass. He became light in a blink.

Days of Vagrant Youth  

We sit around drinking poison 
that’ll give half of us  
cancer  
             and the other, madness, 
mistaking ill euphoria for 
wisdom of the moment.  

We’re

As my passion for tweeting grew, my grip on reality subsided.

He said his responses were never good enough for her, that she made him feel like an asshole.

Maybe she didn’t need to map it all onto some existing story.

Warm from the soup and already forgetting what we drove through, I pick up a copy of The Pearl, by Steinbeck.

It was a glorious fall afternoon, with the occasional orange leaf dropping in through the sunroof. Hadley flipped down the sunvisor and studied herself. With her dark hair and sharp cheekbones, she strikingly resembled her mother.

'WHO DARES TRESPASS IN MY STREAM!' he bellowed.

There were no recent photos of him. Only ones from when we knew each other, reposted over and over, as if he were still there…in 2003.

Take me out of this smoke-filled apartment to where the pines and the river are. Near or far. I'm tired and I need to rest. I need a change of scenery. A radical one.

Lothar took a bold step towards Tom and sniffed Tom’s sweating, planted hand. “I think they’re friendly? If we don’t scare them?”  

Your soul, yes, bright as a star in a blackened sea-sky. Something to admire from a cliff,
impossible to hold. 

Perhaps, I thought, I belonged on the laundry room discard shelf with “still good?” written across my forehead.

Once a story ends it can be owned.

look at me and how I just / sit around and fucking pout

The description stated that it needed to be handled with gloves, which was a little frightening for something that was supposed to be ingested.

We get quite hungry, you know, never touching the ground.

They called it the ‘tip of the spear.’ China in the east, North Korea not far.

If I tell you that my 76-year-old brother began using drugs when he was 14, you might guess what our relationship has been like over time.  And, if add that my parents always favored my brother,

On the anniversary of the worst day of my life I was finally able to let go of a burden I have been carrying for more than a year. I am free, I’m not fucking crazy, there is love in my heart, and sweet gentleness in my soul.

Spirals in the / Sky spray out eight billion cassette tapes / So anyone on any other planet might wit / Just how thin earthly love has withered.

She offered the poison on the tip of a spoon.

A couple months ago my mother and I had to dig up my grandmother's grave. I looked away from her face. My mother didn’t: her eye is gone, her skin is gone, and her mouth is a big hole.