In which we listen to ourselves being recounted in the mouth of the boyfriend 

To recover from the grand wizard of empathy’s commencement speech, I have since camped at grocery stores, when I can afford them, awaiting the flotation device of my college degree’s supposed intellectual extenuation of the human gridlock.

Worst thing I ever did I did when I was doing Hank’s cousin, Theresa. It was a crime of sloth, a crime of not-saying.

The people in my workshop suggested the stories were detailing co-dependency. From my position of fiction writer I laughed and nodded in agreement so as not to appear too sentimental towards the material. I thought of my classmates as boring and responsible and generic, and reasoned that they couldn’t understand the characters’ interactions because they were only limitedly tolerant of anything eccentric—

Painting of a Vietnamese restaurant lunch menu.

Painting of a woman being pulled out of a river
by her hair and she is smiling and her hair is dry.

Painting of a war-torn meadow:

the defining experience of Western women today is internal conflict

Golden Boy lived in a little house on our mantlepiece.

She's flying!
Hip, hip, hooray!
Wooooo!

Bro Country is not all that different from dudes in general and real life. I've dated enough white dudes and went to college in Kentucky and I've been to, like, twenty-five Dave Matthews Band concerts, so, trust me, I know this stuff.

Oliver sat in the locker room, a towel tucked neatly around his waist, next to a Smithfield rep who was slicing open packages of hot dogs and wrapping them individually in foil. Oliver did not have

There were tears. When I’m writing about the past, I’m aiming to come to a place where I can feel or understand something that I’ve previously never been able to resolve. Or feel something other than anger, because anger is never just anger.

The summer you learned who was dealing what. You were applying to programs, your pointillism, neat in ink, when a wind disappeared your drawing.

I am a woman of discipline, which is to say: I don’t act at random. But I once slept with a mindreader on a whim.

the sky is gray and you will not stop talking
about balance
this focus has become your baby
for at least the past three days
last week it was tarot cards 
and a techno

Amanda, I thought... I, I don't understand. You said this was over.

Why is there shattered glass?

It's from a light bulb.

All Roger Moore wants is a drink. He’s had a rough couple of days. He’s Bond—James Bond—but nobody seems to believe him. He’s not in the mood for a martini, doesn’t care to micromanage the

I’m to blame for every fake suicide this week. If anyone knocks at the door I shout the addresses of shut-ins until I hear footsteps. If the knocking continues I take my gun and start shooting through the walls.

All I wanted was the haze of a worn gown / of sleep after the scrape of that / honey-sipped night.

Hopefully, I’ve ingested enough synthetic flavor to stop my heart real early. Or to maintain tinnitus for the length of a harassing phone call. If not, the only responsibility of the adult is to be their own Kevorkian.

All summer the future had been coming for us like a thunderstorm at which turkeys look up and drown in the rain.

Most nights he wakes to use the bathroom and in so doing wakes the dog, which in turn figures it might as well do the same.

He was like, "Everyone knows what racoons like to do."

What an asshole.

I hadn’t had any alcohol to drink in forty-two days.
I had told myself I wouldn’t drink for thirty but once you stop doing something it’s hard to start doing it again.

I agree to an extended death

I am yelling out the windows

of this speeding automobile

I had runoff all over. I hadn’t escaped the heartland.