i am built for harsh weather and dazzling violence

That was my youth: I developed a sickness, a ruinous crush on the man at the filling station

Life bleeds thick, porous and holy

When a cherub grows up, he hates angels.

We chased the tail laid before us. Scratching and sniffing our way to pain. We took turns leaving consciousness for a few seconds.

I was driving down the freeway listening to Third Eye Blind way too loud

My friend asks if I believe in / gay marriage

I was stationed in Osh, a forty minute flight south of the capital. I had

a decent sized apartment

1. A bottle of orange wine – half a packet of cigarettes.

2. You caught at the bar the space so crowded that people were practically caught under your armpits – grinning nervously, two pina coladas in hand.

3. A kitchen dance – or two.

4. Luther Vandross.

Part I of the book is titled Forest. 

Bobby was going down, not on a woman or a man but fast and with extreme force into the frost covered asphalt of a Holiday Inn parking lot, five minutes from the Detroit airport.

If I have to die, I want to die for love

My father is talking fast, telling me how the redhead is waiting for him.

Once her parents were reliably asleep she helped herself to a long hot shower, a respite which was what she imagined drugs must be like.

Gone, like T9 texting, is the once exciting novelty of being important, popular, scandalous

One night—which was, as it turned out, my last night camming

“Must have been rich kids,” says Al. “A lot harder to make money staying anonymous.”

Mai Knicker

when congress bans our faves we will smuggle them through customs and call it praxis

The solar system running sloppy
down the sides of your vest.

It all started with a wrong clap. I remember that because Dave was saying that when she was born, her dad got mad that she clapped on the 1 and the 3 and not the 2 and the 4. He was clapping weird.

what do i fucking care what gloria e. thinks of me?

do i not have the right to nitrous oxide 

I knew the talk about a baby was another red flag, but the more uncontrollable Amelie became, the deeper I got hooked. I couldn’t go back to what my life was before. I think it had been drowned the

I get insecure when you say things like

I was born when you were 15

The thing about Grandma is that she seems to show up unannounced and she doesn’t care about the substance of the prayers, just that they end in Amen.

 I know Max is probably hard by the time we get to the overlook at the dam. He puts the car in park and tells me he mixed a cd, just for me, because I’m so special.

- I can’t believe this is