She had grown up and now lived in a cold climate that encouraged looking down.

Yoda sat atop the wreckage of his escape pod, still creaking from skidding into the murky swamp hours prior

Please God forgive me. Please God forgive me.

The day my brother died, my mom ran naked in the street.

You’re in Miami and you're driving under the banyans and the palms and you're heading away from the tennis courts by the water and you're looking at the sky above the parkway and you're heading home and sometimes it feels like you'll always be in Miami.

"Blooper Reel" and "A History of Sex"

The guy at the hardware store convinced me to buy a bag of concrete mix.

I remember playing some songs at four in the morning and asking if you liked them. What the songs sounded like doesn’t matter now. I only knew a little about songs back then but I know a bit more

The bum drags himself off the floor. Then comes on nice. Real buddy buddy shit.

A few of the Greater Mosquitoes jogged by with their boards across the flats, all chest and teeth and bleach-brown hair and headed joyous to the break.  They ran full on down the slope, stepped high

While the atmosphere pumps steroids into hurricanes, let me feel the Ecuadorian sun on my face.

"Wild Seeds of Plums" and "Old Name"

It’s weird at first. The tenants through the wall. Inhabiting what used to be one-half of their home. The clanging pots and toilet flushes, heavy footsteps. The second truck in the driveway beside

“Hide the Tzahal patch,” he warned before seeing me off.

Trigger

Up north she took her daughter for a walk to see the woods. Their host’s big yellow dog came along. The snow was deep. The dog was off and ranging. She crept under a fir tree and showed her

And while I could mythologize those years as a win for self-actualization—I did start that band—it was also a time of anxiety and frustration. 

"Nereid, Compromised" and "Day One"

At midnight there was a knock on our door, and though our hallmates often knocked at this hour

The film was a Disney re-release, full of rollicking creatures with wide-flung arms emitting human sounds through smiles that hummed and flickered like radio speakers.  Blake was too drunk to follow what was going on, but he ate his popcorn and drifted in and out of sleep, and the things were laughing and singing to him. 

"Give Us the Runway & We Will Lift the World" and "Instructions in the Event of an Emergency"

We stepped into a washroom and I looked longer at the ring on her finger. “It’s just for starters.” She opened the tap of the industrial sink and drank sideways, water slipping down her chin. She

Out there on the hill she rides that old horse back and forth through the afternoon. I see her from the window. I think she's trying to kill it. The old man walks behind me again and I can feel his

"Unlikely to Condemn" and "Different Circumstances"

My homework, which I assigned to myself, the way kids do sometimes, consisted of hobbling around my room in a witch hat, practicing spells on my shoes. 

Her husband had grown the jalapeños in the backyard along with shy heirloom tomatoes and a few anemic cucumbers. He’d tried lettuce and even Sugar Baby watermelons but, at the first sign of ripeness,

I ate the steak violently because that was how I loved, and a love this intense must always be met with more.