If I had to choose one moment that convinced me of my own insignificance, it would be that time I saw the world spin.

“I was just thinking about you,” he emailed, a week later. “I’m rereading The Bell Jar.”

They were not in Brooklyn, California, a nice suburb outside D.C.

They were in West Virginia.

Hey, here’s an idea: how about you don’t spend half the period texting your boyfriend, and then he won’t dump you in the middle of class. Ever think of that? Maybe you talk to him like a human being instead of sending him a bunch of fucking sideways sad faces. 

Everyday we took Jelly for a walk on the track.
If Julia was busy teaching, Scott and I took Jelly.
If Scott was busy teaching, Julia and I took Jelly.

My friend Jamie holds out a thistle bloom, her fingers curved gingerly around the prickles. “Eat this,” she says. 

Anthony was my reason for everything ... for South Park, for Tupac, for horror movies, for music that sounded like screaming, for my parents' vodka, my sister’s mascara, for all the girls I put down.

What we really wanted was to be older.  What we really wanted was for something to happen, take us away from Florida and into the rest of our lives, but that doesn't happen for teenagers, not so much, and so we stood and waited.

Civil War Day was a staple at Reginald Middle School, implemented somewhere in the shady patriotism of the Reagan era before carrying through as tradition.

She grips the bat the proper way, the way Dad taught her. Right over left, the knuckles lined up like railroad tracks or piano keys, two of Dad’s many analogies thought up on the fly. Yet another:

In the original cut of the movie, Ray says, “You wanna have a catch?” But test audiences were disappointed with the complete lack of father-son acknowledgement.

“It’s time to choose,” the prison warden gruffly informed the man on death row. 

On my way to somewhere else, I happen to pass my ex-boyfriend Rob’s apartment, months since I’ve seen him, but he’s been showing up in my sleep recently, making me roll and grumble.

That’s what your parents say when they come in with their Santa suits. But it’s not Saturday. It’s Tuesday. It’s time to go to school.

I’ve been shipped off to spend the summer with my uncle in Beijing. There is my face in the computer’s reflective meniscus, watching his stocks.

At the age of sixteen I worked a job digging holes. Sometimes it was ditches, other times it was retention ponds.The work was as hard as it was simple. Every evening my boss would slip me a crumpled

We agreed to meet in a bar known as the ‘anus of the city.’ It had terrible lighting which obscured its ugly regulars. The regulars had heads like onions with names like Fred, Harry, Deborah, Henrietta. Years of drinking had withered their necks to the size of cocktail sticks and I didn’t pity them because I liked hating them.

She liked to take care of me and I let her. “Sorry about the bread,” she said, handing me a full plate. “It got soggy.”

We ate in the living room, looking up every once in a while at the screen

The main thing about washing dishes at Ronny’s Café is I can come into work pretty fucked up and no one seems to notice—least of all Todd. 

We talked about a lot of things when we were high. We talked about a lot of things when we were sober, too. 

Dad’s side are all boring fucks. Mom’s side, god—all my mom’s brothers thought they were the outlaw rebel cowboys of New Jersey. Wild ones. Alcoholics. They were fun, while they lasted. All those men

It was late July, those days in Chicago when summer is past its prime and everybody's waiting around for a bit of fun.

They had taken all the milking cows but left us the wheat fields that fed them. Only Boy handles our cow creamer with two hands, respectfully, as we consider it a new-religion relic. He is too

The photo I'm about to share is a sandwich, on a big brioche bun, cheese dripping out the sides, and juicy roast beef, beet red and bloody, two inches thick. I stick in two toothpicks, with blue

Weird day at work. Serving at Maria’s, couple walked up to me, looked like they’d been crying, gave me one hundred dollars. Five twenties.