There areThree parts to any start. A Triptych. Trust me.  

Skaters are like theater kids with better outfits.

A Little Death

I want my gentlemen taken care of, kids nonexistent, my money on the table and it’s black on first spin.

An aggressive Doberman knocked Cindy up weeks later.

looking up at me with eyes like dogs
who’ve humped too many pillows
and now it’s time to pay the price

She feels her and this bartender, this boy, are doing sex theater. Romance theater. Everything theater.

Affection follows episodes of abuse

The secret is getting almost too in the weeds. The secret is Bujalski-maxxing.

            But by then I was dry heaving on some dark back road.

Another reading.

When a lover doesn't know your name

I could swim inside a seafoam green field. 
I could have cigarette breath again. 

Our teacher is running late, the distractingly beautiful former beauty editor emailed our group. This confirmed my suspicion that she and my teacher had a separate text thread going. She was, after

He lies there, crumpled and ragged—
a pile of unwashed laundry.

A Review of Alexandra Naughton’s Sick of Being Inside Myself

"How deep do you want to go?" the facilitator asked as I knelt before a candlelit altar. It was reckless to choose a depth in an ocean I’d never seen, but I aimed for the bottom. "Very deep," I said—a

[It began when I learned]

It began when I learned to sit                                       I began when I burned and sat
in my boredom, our poverty with                                in my

Charley and I met freshman year of college. She was the blonde one, whereas I was not. I was never the blonde one. We went to college on a big hill, warm in the summer, warm in the winter. We both

She sang along to the songs, swaying on the spot, and seemed to know all the lyrics. She smiled at him and grabbed him when their big hit came on, singing “There she goes” at his face, until, grudgingly, he sang along too. Then she kissed him

It's the fourth week out of five of our Zoom writers' workshop, and I've finally gotten used to the rhythm of my Wednesday nights. There's my teacher, in New York City, the sweet nerdy man from

I kept swinging, and he started headbanging to the music.

In this book, I kept using the word “buzz” in various forms. Buzz, buzzy. I think I even got the word “bloodbuzz” in there, which I stole from the band The National.

Someone kissed the love of their life at the party.

The world might 
not be here tomorrow,
but she still draws 
a perfect outline 
around her 
lips and eyes. 

Those long walks and unresolved questions gave him an appetite. For skin and flesh. The allure of degeneration presented itself again. This time as a salve for pain.