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.

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?”  

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I am trying to love the crook in my back.

Three months out of the year I get to file for unemployment. I swim, I paint, and I try not to fuck things up. I have a real tendency to fuck my life up.

The house’s cracked smile
hides behind spines of oak trees.

If I got what I wanted I would actually be doing what I’d wanted to do all along, step inside not history, but living art itself. And for this I would undoubtedly be considered a bad mother—many easily burning me at the stake.

I have developed an awareness / Of my need to perform this fervor  / And what I thought was fear / Turned out to be excitement.  

My girl smells like maple syrup and hay.