On "American Beauty" & Choosing to be Childfree
Belinda Cai
The freedom is almost overwhelming.
The freedom is almost overwhelming.
You were compiling something and the itch for alcohol had blocked all business until you’d gotten up, checked the stove, and left.
Telling my wife was hard. Telling my best friend was going to be hard. Telling my family was going to be hard. But leaving was right. And I was raised to do hard things that were right.
You are only who you are to him. Waitresses treat you weird and ask questions..
I suggested we arm wrestle as I did with every boy. I was a pick me and for my spreadsheet.
It is the night before I will meet my future ex wife. Neither of the mirrors are skinny.
It was summer heat
And the breath of living someone else’s life
Sisters remain sisters even when one is going through nuclear-grade poisoning and the other is directing a DIY haircut through a phone screen.
I was a woman obsessed, before and after the overdose.
It still bugs me that I never understood why she’d seen Hadestown eleven times (our first date was her twelfth).
The thing about being a lesbian in New York City is that on the third Thursday of any given month you’ll have to stand in a hot Brooklyn bar that is absolutely teeming with gay people. At least four
I was ready to string paper streamers, wires, and sausages from my ceiling and set them on fire. I looked for any crystal chandelier to mount. I longed to feast on croissants and pickles from the tip of a spear. After shrugging off the yoke of Christian dogma, I didn’t need to bear another set of rules.
Cragged rock reaches skyward, gaps in the green either burn scars or metamorphic bands.
We finish dinner and the waiter comes with shots of limoncello for the table.
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What violence is there in giving someone a name, carving out Ida's real name
of these fourteen strips, lacing up the endless observations each day
in the deformed images of words that tell
“We come here once a month,” the woman added. “To spice things up.”
I don’t want anything serious. But come to raves with me. Take drugs with me!
I laugh and say, “is that a Rupi Kaur poem?”
A recap of New York's biggest night.
Part of making art is religiously making as much as you can when creatively inclined and then shaping what’s there.
If Miami were a person, she would have veneers from the same dentist who does her Botox
Tina joins our class mid semester. Instantly, I dig her aura. She shares the relaxed gait and slow drawl of the local stoners. She wears her dark hair flat and parted down the middle and has an
Over coffee, he told me he thought I dumped him last time because we had sex too soon.
Her umbilical right to intimacy makes me wonder if I ever left the womb.
I was convinced I would die. A lone cig, maybe three gin spritzes, benzodiazepining into extinction. Ativan.
Love is like a museum. You have to look around, experience things, and then leave.
Garielle's longest, most peculiar, most particularized book. A sure-to-be collector's item. Delivery 4-6 weeks!
“Legs Get Led Astray is a scorching hot glitter box full of youthful despair and dark delight.”
—Cheryl Strayed, author of WILD