During my first year of grad school, I learn how to kill rats. I work in a lab studying time perception, a cognitive function that’s not fully understood. We have to train new rats for every study.

The driver laughed when you couldn’t pronounce the name of your destination. It’s a cobblestoned European town the same as every other cobblestoned European town you’ve seen so far.

In the mornings, we watch the wagons come in a procession, rolling down the streets in one thin line.

1.

And they all lived happily ever after. 

2.

Finishing work on the Saturday and heading to the pub because that’s what we always did. Tall Paul and small Paul and (ordinary) Paul, Ian, Bel,

after K Ming Chang

Late June, during the spider lily harvest,

            Meng Po sutures shut my skin

as soup marbles under. A broth that weathers

            me a body for the

I’m supposed to be on my way to Timbuktu, not stuck here, listening to a man sing about the place

Emptying the bottles, a simple task, was more fulfilling and more comprehensible than emptying Dad’s box of ashes 20 years ago.

Vermont in the summer is a place I love.

Chacka

This Whole Foods smells of rot.
A lady holds half a jackfruit like a baby,
Pushes her fingers deep into the damp decay. 

We call jackfruit chacka back home (although who’s we?
I

I wanted landscapes I could sink back into. I needed mountains to wrap around, rivers to rest naked upon, fields to drown in, an old snake skin stuck to the bottom of my boot

Begin with Angels in the Outfield, a mid-nineties movie remake in which a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt prays that his local baseball team, the California Angels, will win the pennant, and literal angels

I remember when my parents first told me.

A man sits in a bar in a no-name town in a flyover state. It’s late. He’s alone. A double whiskey sits before him, sweating on a cheap cardboard coaster. The bartender knows his order by sight.

The thing to do in those days was to take a road bike from the 70s or 80s and swap the parts out. I had an old Fuji, and so did everyone else. But you should've seen the colors: burgundy frame with

1.

I worked for eighteen years as the associate director of a nonprofit organization. The director and I were an effective team, in part because of our complementary strengths. I liked to say that

Election Night at the Stud

On the dance floor,
               my fingertip traces his infinity tattoo

and I wish more things were uncountable,
                            although cruelty

The best plastic surgeons are cultured. They stand at the intersection of art and science and are not, generally, superficial.

Shrine

In the market, Rayanne arranges
breadfruit and guava on her stand.
She frames them with squat pumpkins
and green hooks of plantain. She
leans against her stool to stretch her
legs,

We never thought the calcification was a problem.

Letrozole (2.5mg)

Pharmacists are torn over which tone to take with me, Letrozole being used primarily to treat breast cancer in post-menopausal women after surgery. In Google summary, a

The next time Jonathan and I had a playdate I told him what had happened. I was sitting on his bed and he was sitting at his desk when he told me a secret.

I assume you have a regular route on your nightly rounds, those eagle eyes scanning for any lock popped daringly up like a gopher from its hole.

Tropic of Cancer

for Lawrence Stewen

On this shore, the insects scheme, sing
the hair along my body. I say I dream about

strolling where the moonlight hits the water
and disturbs it,

If thinking your own thoughts has never brought you love, is it so bad to let another think for you?

I saw Jim Jarmusch yesterday.

Previously on...

Chapter 1a: Converging

I was God’s favorite, once—enough
schoolgirl in me to make Mary
sweat. not a fall-from-grace, but something sweeter.
an unlit cigarette wedged between two
adolescent fingers; & the skin like

I suppose a meaningful conclusion I came to was that it's often fruitful to follow diversions and accidents, but that you have to create the conditions to experience them.

Jilly and I fought a lot when we were kids. When other folks tell me they never fought with their siblings, I think about all the circumstances in their childhood that would have made that a remotely