It is a gift / to be alone in this world / together with everyone / and everything / we’ve ever loved 

It really is beautiful, he thinks, taking another puff on his joint, how music brings people together.

I looked up on the internet how to say pubic lice in Spanish and went into the pharmacy.

There is a War between Words and Things. Armies are on opposite sides of a River called Speech

I don’t care about writing anymore this is stupid / I don’t care anymore about this shit / They were like umm but doesn’t this mean so much to you / I said no

June climbed down tiredly from her perch, and sat at the kitchen table, resting her hot cheek on the cold tabletop while Amos called the rest of the family down from their places of hiding. 

Posting feels sacrificial. Like giving something away. It’s an act of vulnerability, isn’t it? Sending something personal out into the unknown, with the possibility someone might see it, relate, make contact.

While the lamb is roasting, I go to the bathroom and cut off some of my hair with the kitchen scissors.

It was the summer of 1977. Son of Sam was stalking young couples.

It’s evening already / and the vibes are so off / it isn’t even funny. 

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

Days of Vagrant Youth  

We sit around drinking poison 
that’ll give half of us  
cancer  
             and the other, madness, 
mistaking ill euphoria for 
wisdom of the moment.  

We’re

The unknown boy, that uninvited new friend, showed his freckled face, sang a cumbia with us, and drank from our glass. He became light in a blink.

As my passion for tweeting grew, my grip on reality subsided.

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?”  

Your soul, yes, bright as a star in a blackened sea-sky. Something to admire from a cliff,
impossible to hold. 

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.

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.