"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.

This was only a few months after I lost my husband, and much of that time is a blur. I still felt as if there was something between me and the world. In some lights it was a window, in others a mirror.

Fearless, sweet boy, / your courage is not lost. / I am uncontainable / ​​​​by nature too. 

He looked like the kind of person who fed the pigeons in the park, and he charged $44.99 per hour to come to my home and hurt me. I scheduled him for the following Thursday.

There wasn’t anything to say, or to do, but there was this terrible feeling as though one of these things was the thing desperately in need of pursuing.

good afternoon, passengers. this is your captain speaking. first of all, i would like to welcome everyone to my midlife crisis.

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. 

The knife turns, but blood in your teeth isn't poetic, even when I almost enjoy it

Then, my ex decided that they had to move to New York to build community around doing shrooms, eating olives, and working for NYC Health

He’s dreaming. I can touch him softly when he sleeps. I can watch his body heave and rest. We need this. 

Vicodin is why I was smiling

Have the dream where everything is perfect; then wake up.

I quit writing all the time and then I get a job and I can pretend for about a year. But then the words have built up in my head, and I start to think, “Ok, I can be homeless and it won’t be that big of a deal because I can write in libraries 

I felt the snap. A fool outrunning the weather, only to find out I was still too much.

I understand.

Really, I do. I've heard enough compliments to recognize the attraction I carry behind me. I can see why you needed to reach out and grab hold, like a mirage that might disappear as I

Online, I see a lot of writers waxing poetic and posting memes about wanting to get into journalism and publishing based on what they saw growing up in Almost Famous, The Devil Wears Prada, 13 Going on 30, etc. I was raised on those movies, and raised – in the first five years of my life – surrounded by writers and editors. Both of those influences made me feel like writing was not only a viable career path, but a very glamorous one too.

Masterpiece

I see the world askew.

There’s a storm inside

my window,

inside my gemstone eyes.

There’s an army

in my fist,

fighting all my friends.

So, bring me splattered

A man without a story is of no interest to the living.

He imagines regaling his girlfriend, who is sound asleep across the house, underfucked and on her way out soon, out of his life, that is, a fact unacknowledged by either but appreciated by both, with the news that he’s caught a cockroach.

I tried to see another way / and you shimmered / glitch-like / like a god. 

Her love can grow 18 feet in a year / roots deeper than a well / Her appetite can leave you hollow / pulling away, yet drawing near

Sometimes, I find myself fantasizing, in a dissociative state where Everything Everywhere All at Once is not just a movie but a real possibility

BABY ANGEL 

I waited for her to arrive. We planned to drive to the desert, camp in the shadow of sandstone boulders. On Monday, her tire blew out. On Tuesday, she slept late, too late to set

Riley took a little step forward and looked up. “Do you want to play Xbox with us?”

déjà vu; the present doing / an impression of the past; / an inversion of echoes; / resonance as viewed through / bed posts; a forest of legs / under a row of tables.

In the years since my own trip, at 23, I’ve grown generally more wary of people. Have developed a much needed cynicism when it comes to random acts of generosity.