I couldn’t sleep when we shared a bed anyway, so most nights, when he was deep enough, I wriggled out of his armpit to lay on the floor, play Pokémon until sunrise caught on spots in the window.

I start with which would you rather as an opportunity to open up the conversation for a set piece I've prepared. In summer I might ask how does everyone like their air.

Dan got an associate’s degree in business, works for a bank and still deals a little dope on the side. Moss sells high-end real estate in the city. Spence moved to Brooklyn for the music and he’s got an EP on Bandcamp that’s pretty damned good. I’m the only one who stayed in town.

We are the high school hallwalkers, the frequent fliers, the do not admit until disciplinary list, the back of the class, the front of the class where I can keep my eye on you, the laughing and fighting and nodding off 

i took a girl to a donut shop after an art show

i bought her a donut and milk and then we sat in my car

we talked and ate donuts

she said she had thanksgiving dinner with a guy who shot two cops

Pizza Hut pays for my gas, and of course I eat for free whenever I get to one of our restaurants. They allow me fifty a day for lodging, but since we’re saving for that patio set I usually just sleep in the car if the room is over forty. In Iowa City it was hard to find something that cheap but Missouri is like motel central! 

six years later and I only know how to be needed

“The organism is made to self-regenerate,” she said as we walked to my 1980 Buick in the gravel lot.  “In this way it is unlike worn-out horses and old-ass cars.”

I am thinking about the lungfish’s two worlds—the wet one and the dry one—and about metamorphosis.  And I am thinking about strokes—about whether it’s the moment that the arm becomes weak that a person’s life goes into pause.  Or the moment that the blind spot sets in.

Latvia’s Baltic coastline is almost completely undeveloped except for a few fishing villages and some dilapidated concrete resorts for Communist Party officials.  A forest of black pines begins right at the edge of sixty-foot dunes.

The program started with Take Your Kid to Work Day. We were pioneers in the field of crime scene investigation. Everything went smoothly as long as the kids didn’t touch anything. They’ve got eyes

Wasn’t this, after all, why she’d come out here in the first place? To find something special? 

This is not beautiful because this is not beautiful.

I meet a girl on OK Cupid and the first date goes well enough.

Late one night I found him, my long-lost uncle, Duane.

Eventually she won't think of me unless she hears mention of my name, or sees my friends, or a boxy japanese sedan from the 80s, or, perhaps, a Paul Simon poster

I was six, and we were on our way to get a new car.

The apartment listing, spare and direct, stood apart from the exclamation points that forested her vision.

Obviously the place is unsafe . . . 

I came by to talk. Figured it was time to fix a few things.

Here, in the green glass light of the parlor, Swaingrove cultivates its memories.

E says the sky is fuller today and I say it isn’t. Meaning we aren’t significant so why would our surroundings be.

When it’s my turn to order coffee I look anywhere but her eyes and whisper “soy latte” like it’s a secret. When she asks my name I tell her. It doesn’t matter how you spell it.

*

The

Magnolia, Ambrosio, Valance stand still as three pillars. Amongst the ruins of the Roman Empire.

So here’s Anthony, twelve years later. He’s got this white pin on his right breast that reads MY INTERESTS ARE: ANIMALS & POSITIVITY.