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?

I, and my vile habit represented a toxic threat both materially and existentially. It wasn’t only the danger of secondhand smoke, but the mere existence of smoking that they wished to shield from their cherub.

Chris snaps the seal of a Jack Daniels shooter and pops the brown sugar down his throat. Tommy pops Vicodin: Coronado eats a stick of dynamite and blasts his brain with meth, no judgement.

She sits in the grass in her special place and she does her meditation. It is the place she has carved out for herself in the world. 

Relentless torrents of rain poured down that whole night, gently lulling me to sleep.

I haven’t had a sip of water in days. I scan the colorful, exotic flowers that fill the twenty eighth floor apartment. The view overlooks the Hudson River in New York City, and the lazy, muddy water

I could hear the usual blues music booming from Ryan’s garage as I got off my bike in the driveway, sweating through my Smoothie King uniform. Ryan’s dad had started and quit three blues bands in the

So what if I can’t cook? I can clean a crime scene then let you hate-fuck me after.

Chronic illness already made dating hard. And then the pandemic arrived.

“I almost forgot—” my childhood friend interjected as we were wrapping up a phone call on a blustery September day. “I

I keep trying not to say, I think about you all the time, I want to come for you, and I hang up without saying it, and then I call you later from my bed and I end up saying it all anyway.

What I mean is I write auto-biographical fiction and as such I’m a habitual and unrepentant liar-liar-pants-on-fire sheep in wolf’s clothing.

this Christmas

this Christmas i realized
i don’t have a family
i have familiar strangers
i can drink beers with
forget myself with
but not family

ever since I remembered
my mother tried to

Swallowing those pills at night was now like playing Russian roulette; the blues were, for the first time in many years, the leading cause of drug deaths in Scotland, overtaking even heroin.

Once, I thought I would forgive. Now, a year later, I’m still waiting for the feeling to appear