The Kratom store felt like a doctor's office. A guy in a white shirt and jeans next to a slumped woman attended to us.

The first night I slept with R, he took Viagra and Adderall. He treated me to the sex marathon of my dreams and instantly cemented himself as the man at the top of my roster.

I took a 10mg edible and brushed my teeth in the bathroom at LAX that evening.

I was sick for four months, but it was not the kind of sick I was used to: it was a numbing contagion. Under darkened skies, I coughed up the particles of illness. I looked at the walls

When you think of birds of prey, you probably don’t think of a Shrike. Unless you’re really into birds

We dressed as Luke and Lorelai from Gilmore Girls that year;

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

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.

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.

She offered the poison on the tip of a spoon.

My girl smells like maple syrup and hay.

Record-breaking heat today and tomorrow and tomorrow.

The depression soon followed like a familiar friend who I had hoped to leave behind.

Video after video, she became a fan in front of the camera, leaving her future self a playlist of nostalgia.

Could it really be true that Betsey actually let him put his fingers inside her? In both holes, as they reported? How could he do that to Betsey with the Guess jeans, glossy hair, and big boobs?

Our social circles had overlapped for more than a decade. To everyone here, I was first an old acquaintance, a fixed figure of their long past. Not the person I was today.

I feel a change coming on. I want to travel more. I want to visit Vietnam, and Transylvania; I want to watch the sun go down along the Nile.

Murray would be my only American-born super.  He was big and fat and had a very productive-sounding cough and he always dressed in the same dirty white T-shirt and the same baggy corduroy pants whenever I saw him—summer, winter, spring and fall. 

There is a rooster tail of snow and ice behind it, and the roar of the engine enters my chest before he reaches me.

Käärijä doesn’t win Eurovision. We both know this and don’t. Instead, the album brings us to a body broken and weary. Käärijä is willing to do anything, joints displacing themselves to the beat.

"My wife and I are looking for a third partner. I was thinking, maybe…" — here he gave a small cough, his speech turning slurred and hard to follow.

Every time I write it comes out far too dramatic. Everything feels so insidious right now. Everything feels so precarious right now. Everything has fallen into place.