Under the ribs, between the lungs, where no periscope lives
to view the damage of long nights spent in cold underpasses...

It was then that they strode past me. Mid-thought, my attention snagged on the powerful wisp of her. She wore a spandex outfit—itty bitty sports bra and bicycle shorts, her lean legs sprouting from chunky Filas.

At the Metropolitan Ave Kmart, there was a parking lot in the sky.

Cam asks when I am going to change my pants just to prove to his pierced girlfriend that he doesn't like me all that much. I tell him I wash them daily, but he says that doesn’t mean it’s not weird.

I grab her hand,
thinking it’s my own and tell her I’d eat it too.

Before Hannah can protest, I get out of bed, put on gray and pink checkered pants and a black top. Having romantic feelings for a woman is new territory; her laugh is all I can think about.

DAY 10:

The part of the novel where your character goes to Applebee’s to forget.

He told me he was in the process of determining the next stage of his life.

LaJoie dropped to their knees and shouted out the phrase "Oh dear god!"

I contribute glasses of water to prevent dehydration, / towels to mop up leaks on the floor, and witticisms,

There was a frog in our house.

He works out of that clinic on the corner of Sydney Road, opposite the 7-Eleven. After I visit him I often walk up the road and get an okay bánh mì from the closest vietnamese bakery.

When we talk about a writer’s work, we are talking about the things she makes: poems, essays, books. It’s a mercantile word to apply to the artistic process, and yet it’s an inescapable one. Short

We’d thought he only taxidermized celebrities’ pets. But then we saw him crossing the yard carrying Mickey Rooney.

Like Richie’s “Hello,” Adele’s “Hello” is also an ode to longing.

She smiles and waves at me. I return her smile, mine more faint than hers, and I see her catching sight of something or someone behind me.

I have never touched a cow or even
another man.

A couple was making love outdoors while a grizzly bear watched—it was a tv show— and I thought, this reminds me of me.

Under the pretense of repairing things, I go to prove I am not broken.

I will never read this essay out loud, so let me take some risks:

Almond, salmon, Episcopal, peony, Adidas, melancholy, mischievous.

In my head: Owl-mund, sal-MON, epic-SKO-poll.

I add force

Still though, that’s fucked up.

I agree, I say. It is fucked up.

Even in death, I would make a showing of my conscientiousness. I would step into a black trash bag, first removing my heels to avoid a snag. I’d put a note on the outside of a second bag before pulling it over my head.  “Please do not open; call the police.”

I stand in front of this body-length mirror. The compression vest is gone, the drains are removed, and all the cushioning gauze has been peeled away; I’ve watched video after video of other

Field Report From Concurrent Timelines

(Or: Basketball)

What I’m saying is:

There are countless alternate realities in which Kawhi Leonard’s game seven buzzer beater against the

I’ve never run for political office and have no desire to run—which is not to say that I’ve never thought about it—but I do know what it is to move, to travel, to traverse, to go around for the sake of one’s ambitions.

The last time I dream of him, my dead ex-boyfriend asks me to stop bringing him back.

Usually, when I dreamt him alive, he didn’t speak. I’d sit next to him while he sorted mail. I’d watch him turn