Iron isn’t gold, but who cares? Pass me the luster, 
the hammered brass & the Perspex glitter.

By March of 2016, my cousin Josh and I were practically flat broke. We’d been having an incestuous and adulterous affair, one that elevated his title to “cuzband” (he hated that term). Four years

There was a week when my grandma was gone, I had the whole place to myself, was drinking the regular Coca Cola classic and the half sized baby Coca Cola and brought the Abercrombie pictures out in the open on the second floor. I meditated.

Sometimes I think I won’t understand what it is that I’ve lost until I write a book about it.

The great neon calamity of his own life exhausts him.

I’m not fat exactly, not fat like an orangutan or avocado, but I’m also not thin. Not thin  like those women on commercials, with bodies like Coke bottles – all dipped and smooth, tastin’  somethin’ like cherry. I’m lumpy like expired cottage cheese.

I’m interested in these conversations more than anything else, moments in which we care for and about each other in a world that says nothing’s more important than self-care after a productive day at work, where we’re constantly pit against each other, forced to compete with our peers to earn and preserve the right to exist.

She wanders a Sisyphean circuit around Berlin: to meetings with immigration lawyers, uninspiring parties, lame poetry readings.

The currency of self-loathing is everything you’ve ever said.

One night I was so drunk, I couldn’t feel my face.

her lips run right off her head

she wets the bed in stereo

Did you know emus have two sets of eyelids? One for blinking, one for dust.

Everything’s fuzzing in every direction, the flowers and the water and the stars, and the pizza is impossibly good.

Everything would be fine, sort of, if she could close this deal.

Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel All-Night Pharmacy has everything I want from a book: a toxic sister relationship, countless nights at a seedy LA nightclub, and an unexpected sapphic romance. After her

There is a strength of purpose, I suppose, a fortitude and integrity, in simply admitting yourself to be a malevolent presence skulking the dingy alleyways of your own life.

I was drinking bitters and soda with lemon, my new signature drink. It has .03% alcohol, less than a bottle of kombucha.

It would clog up the bag and you would throw the whole thing into the sea

There’s no amount of $$$ you could offer me
            To shut my mouth

Most of the conversations were boring. Too many back and forths with men she either found only mild to medium attractive or so peculiarly hot that they must be bots. Too many men relating her skin color to some sort of food item.

He produces a handgun from under the seat, displays it, points it up toward the sunroof.

I couldn't look in the mirror because I didn't recognize myself and I was terrified. Not a metaphor for becoming a new mom - I actually could not recognize myself because I had a brand new rare and severe psychiatric condition called depersonalization derealization disorder where recognizing yourself in the mirror is no longer an option.

Right away we shared amphetamines. He fed them to me to keep me awake.

You have to keep in mind this is a true story, and the events I’m about to describe took place before 2006 in a desert land which I’ve never been able to find again on any map. And years later, when I

When I asked years later if you had a sex addiction and you said, No, do you? I hesitated before responding no, because I was thinking, Only to you.

I’m fascinated by the heart's struggle to remain content with any one thing—even when there are no other choices within permissible reach—but I'd like to stop experiencing it firsthand.