Evan, in a cheap hotel room...

My mother and father are stuck in an optic deadlock, her looking at him like she is trying to solve a puzzle or remember the name of a particular film, him looking like he’s just deciphered answers to both.

Mike and I sat in our separate seats and waved to each other. I’d texted him the night before and asked “Wanna see Don Giovanni tomorrow night?” and he said “What the hell. It’s a good hump day

When I clock out at the end of the night my chit says I worked over 10 hours. Before I leave big brother tells me he has a great idea: walk like you need to get to the toilet. I see chef in line at a McDonalds. 

"Whipped" and "Kansas"

I’m on a date with this dude, the guy’s gorgeous, and ripped, skin all sunburnt like a surfer with big white teeth and confident eyes.  It’s all too sexy.  But I’m on guard.  I want to deny him but

We are intrepid travellers hunting – or rather haunting – the square. We are exhausting the place of its details.

You elaborate: Christmas just makes people emotional. "No," she says, raking at her hair with French-tipped nails. "I don't think so."

We’re riding the red line south when Xue suggests stopping in Chinatown to purchase thousand-year eggs. I picture her cracking open an enormous egg and a pterodactyl flying out.  “They’re not really a

In the dark before sleep...

Also, every time they flew and he had that damn backpack on, he forgot that the space he occupied extended beyond his physical back. He whacked bystanders in the shoulders or the chest, and, at least once, the face.

Before that, the father had been away. It was a time that many fathers were away.

The bracelet tells someone where she is, honey. But it doesn’t tell you why.

"Poetry," "Cleaning the House," and "Leaving Again"

They bang their silverware and take turns slamming the toilet seat. They drag their garbage bins too late to the curb and leave them abused by stark weathers all week. Shaker knows there is an awkward progenitor situation.

"Friendship & Other Unknowable Places" and "Diagnosis at the Walk-in Clinic"

I have coffee in my cup. I could toss the hot liquid on her and rush through the revolving door to my appointment, make her the slug.

Dixie leaned against the door, feeling the blood rush to one side before pounding it against the wood.

"Train People" and "Leaving Philadelphia"

The porn gets boring. The plants start to die. I call up the daycare and ask for a job that they will not give back to me. He doesn’t come again.

I’d scratch them by stretching out my fingers wide like cheerleading jazz hands and rub them up and down aggressively along our itchy wall to wall carpeted floors.

Being Jack’s a guy, he’s also tasked with the act of pulling my ass apart when needed so the Radiation Oncologist, Dr. Katz, a short petite woman of prissy demeanor who does her ass work in civilian clothes, even while wearing heels and a tiny purse strapped across her midsection, can insert her finger.

Four days after the initial shit, another pile of human shit was found, this time by the foreman himself, who was checking the inventory of an item located in an ill-lit and rarely visited corner of the warehouse. He immediately called a meeting.

I want to deny him but he’s playin’ it natural and attentive.  He’s good but I ain’t sure if he knows he’s good or if he’s just as polite as he’s coming off.

"First Letter to David" and "On Wanting to Be Loved"

She looked better and better to herself in his bathroom mirror as she washed up and got all ready to spend the night with him in his warm bed. 

I put a stone at each corner of the paper to hold it still beneath the fan in our bedroom. The instructions were simple.

A furniture delivery arrives, as my mother warned me upon leaving for the store that it might, and two nieces who have hidden themselves in a cabinet come out at the sound of the doorbell to ogle the brightly-colored truck in the driveway.

All the Meg Johnsons
would like to kill me

Sitting still can be tough on a body, just as the shifting earth, and plunging and thawing temperatures can be hard on a pipe.