“I’m just excited that my first time voting in a presidential election was for a woman,” my daughter said

“yeah,” I said

“that’s so exciting,” I said

On the back of his badge, he had a barcode with which he could change almost anything.

My book is really about loneliness and alienation (like all my favorite books), but politics comes up in it because everyone is obsessed with politics now.

and partly because she went to Yale and married the class president and blasts the socials with pics of their exotic vacations and announcements of their children’s accomplishments

The guy stood up straight as if physically smacked. I ran up behind her and pushed my finger against the inside of my sweatshirt and couldn’t think of anything productive to add so I just yelled, “Yeah!” and hiccuped.

This is what I was waiting for. I all but cry, but I don’t.

He says that’s how all rock stars die.

My sister once said that I was uninteresting because I lacked an original wound.

I said, this, this. Call it what it is.

I was a minor saint of empty time.

Strange men bought me piss poor

beer, spirit forward and blood red

"Mostly I think Spleen is about celebrating our friendship. It's a love that needs to be emphasized more widely rather than romantic love. Spleen is also a fantasy escape that gives us agency in ways we don't have in reality."

such as the obligatory Ramones cos of bullshit merch culture I thought and turned the hanger seeing Queen, Queen, Queen, Blur-n-Oasis, Queen, Wu-Tang, Queen, Nirvana, The Cure, Slayer, Joy Division

I should have asked John why he was so unhappy. I should have done more than write that stupid note that was all about me and nothing about him.

I suspect that I’m a little bit in love with you
 

but that would be ridiculous because I don’t know

if your wrists sit snugly in my hip dips. Ridiculous

because I don’t know whether you’ll

"The letters shake me up because they are written by regular, everyday teenage girls from across the nation," he said.

she keeps her secrets as easily as she takes off her white
gloves

we were evicted in the
fall my mother’s sought
sobriety

Sabra Zornes had no intention of attending her ex-husband’s engagement party

Adam Berlin’s collection of stories, All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights, opens with an anonymous man standing in the front of the mirror and practicing poses.

Richard Gere doing low-key

The “death of the mother” is trying to do two things: the first is a nod to family abolition and the death of the mother within a capitalistic context. And the second is explicitly thinking through “mothers” dying during childbirth or dying because they are unable to receive care for abortion.

To hold your love aloft. What a victory.

“Can beauty save us?”
“It can,” as I kiss her open mouth.

     That’s all I know, less than nothing.

What I remember of my cousin killing his sister is the sound. The stabbing that sounded like knocking, the knife being driven so hard into Agnes’ stomach it cleared the other side, striking the tub’s

I was on my way to guitar lessons, then Pure Math tutoring.

I didn’t say anything about your job or your Mark Twain or anything. There’s nothing wrong with working in a factory, there’s nothing wrong with bowling, there’s nothing wrong with having a Star Wars room…