A Hopeful Young Man on a Job Interview

I’m broke and eating chocolate ice cream out of a novelty helmet
I’m sweating because I’m wearing a sweater in the heat
to cover up the insane poison ivy on

Just that instant
when thinking becomes
too much

Two things are clear to Ava: It’s time to end things with Nico, and Thad Worley might not make it out of the first inning.

He’s next to her in the left field bleachers chewing on a hang nail and

Almost every day, the sitcom actor goes on Instagram to tell his five million followers what he knows about race, class, and - more often than not, women.

Drive-in movie theater, Merrillville, Indiana, 1989

Field of Dreams on a screen bigger than every building in Merrillville,  

my brother and I eating chocolate sundaes from mini Dairy Queen

The bat was a gift from her father. It was a souvenir bat, one-of-a-kind. “This bat,” said her father, “is more than just a bat. It is a special bat, a valuable bat. It is not to be used. It is not to

1. There is a protective radius of ten feet on all sides of me.
2. I only know the name of one person in this room.
3. My body hair was groomed solely for this moment.

When I'm in Philly, I miss my desk... But when I'm in Ann Arbor, I miss our bed.

In Praise of Hands

I miss hands. I miss their flimsy, awkward quality –

the way one looks when offered while still searching

for a reason. I miss being young, lining up after the

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You are standing on an indifferent platform in Preston Station and a little black spaniel is making unbreaking eye-contact with you as he pisses on your leg.

Aileen Weintraub is one of those incredibly funny writers who also has that superpower to make you cry against your will. You may have read her pieces about pregnancy, motherhood, aging, and more –

On the first day of my streaming career, I asked Gabe to come over to adjust the lighting design of my “set.”

In the middle of
the street is everyone
you know.

Maybe you didn’t recognize me, me with longer hair, growing tits, a new name.

She was going up to Poughkeepsie to see a girl she had met on the internet who, promisingly, shared her passion for Gary Larson comics.

Two men smoking cigarettes on Bleecker could mean anything
to each other.

Fifteen years before my autism diagnosis - the year I chopped off all my hair with jagged scissors - I hid a not inconsequential baggie of hash in my dorm room closet. I was, as always, trying to

When you died in March, five months before I bought my first plant, I learned what sobbing is.

All the time I don’t know what I’ve lost. 

She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it, starts to laugh. ‘I guess we're both freaks.’

I.

In third grade, we spend every lunch writing comic books together. We invent a cinematic universe of imagined worlds to rival Marvel's. I've known her since I was six, and I've known my sister

Is this how a woman
Disappears, water-tap and soil

My six-year-old son stretches his arms to their limit as he describes his latest nightmare.

There is one boat out every day.
We are never packed in time to take it.

She flips a stool on the bar like a lamb