Recently, I told my mother that I used to climb out of the bathroom window in the upstairs and crawl out onto the chimney ledge, where one slip of the ankle, knee, wrist, and I would have fallen three stories onto cement. Perhaps it began as another peace offering—I was trying to amuse her.

There was no way you could have a pair of Nikes and get clowned.

There was a yearning in me for her soft whiteness, which went powdery pink in her most private of places.

In that moment through blinding lights and pelting rain, I saw the police telling my parents what I’d done.

I told this story as a party trick for years.

"with sky as ceiling, / ground as home, / we can call the stranger / lover / and the earth / ours / at least for a little while." 

Take a percocet at around 4:30pm.

Eat a large weed cookie, drink 1 750ml can of beer and then 3 pints between 6:30pm and 10:00pm.

The more I read, the more about voices made sense.  Women’s voices.  The ways in which mine always seemed to stand out, too loud, against the quiet whispers of those around me.

You preheat your oven to 425°F before measuring out two and one third cups of self-rising flour into a glass Pyrex bowl. White Lily is the best though it can be hard to find outside of the south and is worth tracking down. It’s milled from a soft winter wheat, and with it your biscuits puff up into soft, light pillows that literally melt in your mouth.

Every twenty-something in Los Angeles has a comedian friend. In late winter, mine invited me to his show in Culver City with a foolproof pitch: no cover, no drink minimum, nearby parking.

There’s no room that’s mine. This thought occurred to me plenty as a child, but it was a fact without any emotion attached. I think about it especially when I watch house hunting shows: what a wish list looks like for people who get to choose where they live on purpose.

The first time a boy accidently touches your leg you are fourteen—

I had anted up already: pics in the too-small bikini top he liked, back arched in his favorite Brazilian-cut bottoms. Did you just take these for me? he asked. By your mid-30s, romance is infinite regress. Or infinite repeat. Or just infinite, like Groundhog Day, or samsara. I don’t reuse sexts! I replied. This is romantic. We understand this is romantic. It is, in fact, romantic to take pictures just for him.

One evening when I was fifteen, back in 2009, my ballet teacher arrived at the studio wearing a shit-eating grin. Jeff loved to gossip, and he spoke with a showy Southern twang that made the juice of every secret dribble down our fingers.

The last time I saw George, we were hanging out at the brewery where he worked as bar manager. He and I were perched on stools, like old times, sipping suds and watching the Orlando Magic battle our interstate rivals, the Miami Heat. The stale stench of hops and malts cut in from the beer vats in the back while I told him about Boston: the New England beer scene, the fervent sports fans, the colleges where I taught writing. He shared that things had been going well for him, considering.

When I was about five, I prayed to God as I lay in bed. I prayed for the speed of a cheetah, just like the character I had seen in a cartoon on TV. He could run away from anything.

I just remember the room dense with familiar sound, the melancholy howl of the perfectly in-tune saxophones, the electric brilliance of trumpets, a drummer with eight arms; my mother looking over at me, expectantly, as if to say, “This is what you wanted, right? This is making you happy?”

I just remember the room dense with familiar sound, the melancholy howl of the perfectly in-tune saxophones, the electric brilliance of trumpets, a drummer with eight arms; my mother looking over at me, expectantly, as if to say, “This is what you wanted, right? This is making you happy?”

What will be will be. She was a good swimmer, and at least he was getting some exercise. 

I just knew it wasn’t a wolf howling at the moon. I just knew it wasn’t a cow, wasn’t a tree, wasn’t a sunset, wasn’t a child, wasn’t an elder, wasn’t any building I’ve ever built. 

Years later I think of the poetry of peeing. The rhythm and alliteration of Russian race horse, the quick dicks and fricatives, the two tree tonals, the rhyme of drain the main vein.

After I threw up in the Mexican restaurant’s normal-sized toilet and picked my stepdaughter up from school, I decided to try my migraine cure that always never works again.

Exposing myself to the dumbest ideas and the most hateful weirdos online triggers a chemical reaction that gives me pleasure, or something like it. A hoarder of bad ideas, stacking them all up into wobbly piles that might someday topple and crush me.

At last our molars burst forth from the gum and we emerged from the rose-colored womb of our first grade classroom.

A vacation, after all, is just geography.