We rely upon these narratives, asking them to explain away uncertainties about why we are the way we are, about how we have come to be in the world just like this. We ask them to prove to us that we have been here at all.

He sits alone on the beach with his feet in the sand, cigarette in mouth, eyes on the water, though there’s no one out here who knows him, and it’s not clear what he wants, unless what he wants is to be alone, in which case he picked the wrong part of the strand.

I worried I had magically bloated between 9 a.m. and lunch time, even though I’d only eaten the prescribed six saltine crackers.

The weather is hot.  The air conditioning is broken.  Everyone’s body is aching.  “You’re old enough to know.”  Our parents, he says, agree: it is time for us to understand openings, to recognize that we are not pinatas.  We are not stuffed with sugary candies in tight plastic wrappers.  Streamers and noisemakers will not burst forth from our chests.  We should not go at one another with baseball bats.  Openings are not occasions for blindfolds.

Hiring Bodyman

This city hates me

I get so tired
of waiting

for you
I groom myself

Now all I have to do
is show up at your door

& you’ll call me sweetheart
forever

I hate

A river coursing with so much life it broke through the surface. I liked that.

S and I were together nearly a year before the band really got back on the road. Their six-week tour started in Minneapolis.

that was the year that all the carnivals came to town. sounds like a fake small town thing, but when you live in a small town, all the things that happen are fake small town things, except they’re

The summer I was allergic to tap water was the summer I lost all my friends. School was out but nobody wanted to be around me except for Joel who wasn’t really my friend to begin with but sort of became one afterwards. It was understandable. I couldn’t shower and, well, to be perfectly honest, I smelled bad. Joel didn’t seem to mind, though. He worked the check-out at the general store and taped his ear to his head.

I'm Not

Losing / floundering
ignoring / coasting
retreating/ rethinking
stalling / shrinking

I am settling my debts
clearing the inventory
and wiring the electric
to be seen in my own

We’ll leave your hair for the birds, she’d say, so they’ll build their nests to keep themselves and their babies protected.

You asked if I wanted to send you the latest version of my story as a Google doc so you could add comments. You offered to send me one of your stories in  return.

And V, who had been high all day and drinking since around 4pm, suddenly realized how fucking bored she was of all of it, of once again drinking her way through grad school in a cool city going to goth nights with people she was or wasn’t in love with and so V thought about getting up mid-sentence and leaving and calling her old sponsor and hitting up a late night AA meeting or maybe even just going home and getting some sleep or crying but instead she just listened to herself charmingly talk about nothing until she couldn’t stand it and asked the girl to dance.

i think you can learn a lot about a person
based on their Super Smash Bros main. or starsign.
or by asking. how convenient to be told? to learn
in spite of our own misgivings. part of growing

I wake to the shuffle of wind along the sill.
The soft moon hue weighs on my blanket, saying nothing.
From the fragile dark, experiences remembered
become rocks tied to my ankles and feelings churn

As a kid, you don’t really know how swings work. You just move your legs and you get higher and higher. You find out later, regarding the swing, it’s because you are using your momentum through gravity, generating centripetal force to be exact, which creates a back and forth motion. But, for now, on that playground, your sister is swinging next to you and she laughs and yells, Higher! Higher!

So we bought a hearse.

What is my obligation in this moment? Is it to my body or to my daughter’s?

She kicks him in the stomach and then runs at him, screaming, shoving him into a bookcase.

Years later, he asked “Do you still use this email?”
and I replied “No.”

Sometimes
trauma is a prerequisite for softness.
It depends on where you’re from,
and who you ask, but you should always ask.

I wish him luck and watch him until he’s halfway around the bowl. There’s something about a chance encounter, especially in baseball, where you don’t want to know too much.

I couldn't fully recall the Simpsons episode in which Marge buys a near-identical pink Chanel dress.

I was a glamour upon a glamour upon a glamour, a mouth devouring a mouth devouring a mouth.

Snow is falling in Manhattan.

hemos vuelto heridos de una guerra que todavía no empieza
yo perdí una de mis extremidades
y él las perdió todas