Few are lucky enough to realize when their destiny is laid before them. I am one of the lucky few. Mine came when my parents suggested a cruise to the Mexican Riviera from Christmas to New Year’s Eve.

I begin to write a eulogy for
a guy who doesn't exist.

Everyone knew that they weren’t supposed to blame Margot for Joey’s suicide, but they couldn’t help themselves. It’s human nature to place the blame, sort out cause and effect. See a bullet wound,

I’m my mother’s best friend. I fear she is my only friend. My mother and I live alone together in the San Fernando Valley. We used to own two cats, both male, but they pissed the bed, my bed, so I

Lately, it seems like all the women I know are leaving their husbands for other women. I moved from the big city back to the small Southern town where I went to college, and they began to flock to me,

On the drive from our apartment to the emergency room, you take Fullerton through DePaul’s campus. The silence between us makes sense, but without even your usual pop punk to pad it, it feels

Summer of Veal

It was the summer of veal,
and I tried to reach for my rifle
but bullets melted like ice in heat.

Glaring, shine on my head.
Always seconds from passing out, 
passing

The final weekend of January I boarded a plane to Seattle to see, for the first time, a man I had met on a kink website. Or, as I had considered multiple times over the last two months during which we

When i stopped remote viewing my wife / we stopped being married

But she is always here, always too strong to evaporate into some kind of hereto after.

I feel like God with dyspepsia. My soul is vibrating at ultra-high frequency. I want to leave my body. I want to throw up.

There’s makeup running down my face with sweat, but it somehow feels apt.

Today I saw a goose stare down an suv and thought of you.
it got to the other side of the road and tore a few feathers out
following me from a table outside the coffee shop to my car.
I think it

I have no interest in living another 360 years. The folks I get along with have about died off and the world will be on fire by then. I’m blowing my brains out.

Josephine Aycock’s boy, Jeremiah, was due to start middle school that autumn. In the sun-soaked months spanning summer break, she found herself praying for the thirteen year-old more than usual. He

I should have called out, “Marry me,” followed by your name, in that quarter-second of dead air.
Nothing too prosaic, nothing too provocative, just four beats, a stunted swirl of “M”s and “R”s.
My

there is breathing
which is automatic
and there is loving you
and one is easier

Can't spoil what's ahead but suffice to say I may attempt to falsely accuse a fellow indie writer of war crimes in a psychotic bid for even more attention

Crush ten pills into a fine powder, then stir thoroughly in a glass of warm water. Put the glass in the freezer and let sit for twenty minutes. At this point, the mixture will have separated.

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: The aliens actually showed up. They only communicate through images and demand you show them one overall image that explains our civilization. You have five minutes to Google Image search. What do you type into the search bar?

LEAH HAMPTON: “Image of Donald Trump shitting on an endangered butterfly”

The homing pigeon / of misery / is my baby mama's / text message.

Eventually, the coke got to his head. He started becoming extremely paranoid. I was on a trip.

They all knew the drugs. But they hadn’t seen each other in years. The drugs were doing well. The drugs were doing fine. The drugs were good. The drugs were good to run into again. The drugs were taller, maybe? Or, stronger?

All of the bedroom was suffering / with his eyes full of wings.

Waitresses circled the room like vultures. Sometimes I dreamt of laying down on the hot sand, my spine fusing to it, nerves sizzling, going blind from the light, my chest cavity ripped open while they pecked around my ribs—the waitresses, I mean—for whatever they could salvage, whatever was still good.

I was ten when my mother first took me to a psychiatrist. He put me on Zoloft at her request. My relationship with pharmaceuticals is my longest running one to date. My normal.

So I guess I’m an animal then, aren’t I? Why? Why was I born?