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.
The pterodactyl’s crimson, triangular-tailed head,
And the escalator-like galaxy open up...
The first dog barks. Second dog. First dog. Third dog joins in. Then a fourth. Then a cacophony and I lose track of the dogs barking in a distance, down the quiet street where my father and I have nothing left to say to one another.
Xenia and I had been cheating on each other with the same woman for about three months
You will read my restrained but subtly brutal birth story and finally recognize that we who give birth are dauntless soldiers returning to the fight and we are also the old men ignoring the bombs because we have animals at home we love too much to go on and we have never felt more alive than we do right now.
