You don’t see her for several years after that, minus a brief and sweet span of days that following summer, in your usual place. You play Bob Dylan’s Mama, You Been on My Mind squeezed on a piano bench with her.
The first time I met Courtney, she told me she loved my ballet flats. We were wearing the same $14.99 shoes. She hated her curly hair and middle name and Democrats.
Your gym is perhaps your favorite thing about Hattiesburg. Your student budget is tight, but you’ll manage to eek out thirty a month somehow—you have for the last three years.
The day before isolation, I celebrate my birthday, unwed, the first of its kind in my adult life, my divorce from a great man with whom I shared an OK eleven years, finalized by way of a $250 internet
I’d spend the night there on Saturday nights, get up Sunday morning and drive to my church and preach. I didn’t find God because I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me but I didn’t find him either.
1. Driving east on I-94 from 8:41 to 8:55 I saw brief glimpses of beauty.
My favorite blurb about Amy Long's essay collection, Codependence, is Joshua Mohr saying: "Long leads her readers into emotional investigations and she has the courage to never flinch." To do what
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, turning to the man in the seat beside me. Though he didn’t appear to speak English, he intuited my rejection. Loneliness, like love, is an international language.
Maybe you can do this. It’s not your idea. But maybe.
I’d learned from Rock of Love that a diabetic’s rollercoaster blood sugar is a constant interruptor at best.
Previously on...
Part 3 || Part 2 || Part 1 || Prologue
The top of Yoda’s house looked like it had been splattered with molded yogurt. There was an allure to it. Like, had he intended to paint it this odd assortment of colors, he would be proud of it.
last month, every
robin I saw looked
like it wanted to fight
In her dance, Chang’e waves her sleeves to disperse the surrounding mist.
Your boyfriend was the first...
He couldn’t yet do the thing he’d learned to, of establishing some authority by playfully, sweetly infantilizing her. By appealing to the equalizing, mutual infantilization of early love baby talk.
Deep inside some problem of self-perception / a face believes...
I was at a party, one of those parties where everyone is drinking heavily, like they are trying to accomplish something. Me, I was trying to calm my nerves. I don’t know what anyone else’s end goal
I was the only person in my family this level of depravity happened to.
I followed him up the stairs up to his apartment and once inside he made parachutes, wrapping loose MDMA in tissue paper.
No cheating; you've got to keep your fingers touching my fingers. Good. Remember to keep your hands flat. Flat and steady and ready.
When I broke up with you, I thought you might kill me, and somehow, I was bored.
