I had no doubt my husband’s depression was the authentic article, just as I had no doubt that he used this depression irresponsibly, as leverage, a venal tactic, to flatter himself and defuse criticism and basically get every last fucking thing he wanted.

i am the leader, the captain, the general of my troops, and yet it doesn’t matter much to me whether i win or lose.

It’s impressive, I thought, to meet a person like this, but then if you make an effort to face the world then this is just the kind of thing that happens to you. I wondered if my clever friend was thinking the same.

She underlined the quote, “Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”

I imagine the letter got stuck somewhere in the desert, and some camel ate it.

 I fell in love at all of sixteen and don’t you say I wasn’t devoted.

My baby’s eyes were brown but you can tell he wishes they were blue

And I don’t see what it matters, but I can see it does

still, there was so much salt
in so many wounds

Among the crowd at Washington Square, a young man holds aloft a slice of cardboard scrawled with permanent marker. It reads simply: I EAT ASS.

My recent ex was extra, but in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Sure, she had all the traits of a malignant narcissist but so does almost everyone I know.

 life got stuck under the wheels and desire’s language smacked into cliché, death came as Chet Baker crooning love, almost blue

You HAVE TO MOVE!

40 Year Milestone

            I had a dream where
I found a way to look at your
Instagram through one of those hilarious
                        Nebulas
            Dreams
Afford, wrapped tightly with a regal

things will get harder before they get easier

I recently started my third year of university. In my first year, I lived in the dorms and got acquainted with the people who just so happened to be experiencing their Firsts at the same

All I have every week is nothing but free time but I won’t tell the twenty-one-year-old that.

People come to you asking how to behave under certain conditions.

In Morocco, a long time ago, I was orphaned.

As I wait for you, my eyes draw circles around other men.

the movement of our bodies had rubbed the edges of my right knee completely raw.

I was naked and felt like Elvis after six banana and butter sandwiches. It was a very dark time.

I first read Wave of Blood in February. Then, I could feel the winter, but not its cold. What I felt instead was warmth: the warmth of knowing. The overwhelm, even, of knowing. The knowledge I had was

I rode four buses from the burbs to the streets of P Town. A kid who is as rebellious as his parents allowed him to be. I am filled with grunge and a hunger for falafel. A youth shaking with an indie

As if he were some seasonal pollen that gets stuck up my nose and reminds me what time it is, every year at the beginning of spring it all flashes back and I’m right there again in that sticky

​I gave him two months of my fingernails and toenails in a purple mesh sachet that formerly held a bar of scented soap. He had never said anything about toenails, but it seemed like the sort of thing he would appreciate. And he did.

Coming back to people after too many knuckled hours in books…and…it’s amazing to think I had two parents and they are now dead, in the shadow world, and maybe watching me continue to flail: look at bodies on the computer screen and eat too many tortilla chips.