They say The Cloud is a bad metaphor for the internet because this makes it seem immaterial and like its presence doesn’t have a real physical impact on the planet. They say to remember the server

But how did I get it into my head, so early on, that friendship is something you’re supposed to have with only one person, and it’s supposed to be engulfing, and you’re not supposed to survive it?

“You don’t want to be a lesbian,” she said. “Trust me. It’s a tough life.”

I never see Russell differently, I always see him in the same light under the same sun. It’s been difficult lately, but we used to have so much fun. I wonder if he remembers the tequila shots and us

I could hear the cheering of the crowd, their silent plastic mouths were happy; I could taste the dirt kicked up by the elephants, smell the liquid butter sediment of cheap popcorn.

Now is the time to pass down his knowledge before it’s lost in a jail cell, or beyond the reaches of death.

“Are you looking under Entrees?” I asked.

He whipped his menu around. “No, it's in the Nibbles section. See where it says C-section shrimp, amid a local microgreen slurry?”

“Yes.”

I’m my mother’s best friend. I fear she is my only friend. My mother and I live alone together in the San Fernando Valley. We used to own two cats, both male, but they pissed the bed, my bed, so I

Everyone knew that they weren’t supposed to blame Margot for Joey’s suicide, but they couldn’t help themselves. It’s human nature to place the blame, sort out cause and effect. See a bullet wound,

I feel like God with dyspepsia. My soul is vibrating at ultra-high frequency. I want to leave my body. I want to throw up.

There’s makeup running down my face with sweat, but it somehow feels apt.

Josephine Aycock’s boy, Jeremiah, was due to start middle school that autumn. In the sun-soaked months spanning summer break, she found herself praying for the thirteen year-old more than usual. He

Crush ten pills into a fine powder, then stir thoroughly in a glass of warm water. Put the glass in the freezer and let sit for twenty minutes. At this point, the mixture will have separated.

They all knew the drugs. But they hadn’t seen each other in years. The drugs were doing well. The drugs were doing fine. The drugs were good. The drugs were good to run into again. The drugs were taller, maybe? Or, stronger?

Waitresses circled the room like vultures. Sometimes I dreamt of laying down on the hot sand, my spine fusing to it, nerves sizzling, going blind from the light, my chest cavity ripped open while they pecked around my ribs—the waitresses, I mean—for whatever they could salvage, whatever was still good.

So I guess I’m an animal then, aren’t I? Why? Why was I born?

She sits in the grass in her special place and she does her meditation. It is the place she has carved out for herself in the world. 

Relentless torrents of rain poured down that whole night, gently lulling me to sleep.

I could hear the usual blues music booming from Ryan’s garage as I got off my bike in the driveway, sweating through my Smoothie King uniform. Ryan’s dad had started and quit three blues bands in the

So what if I can’t cook? I can clean a crime scene then let you hate-fuck me after.

I keep trying not to say, I think about you all the time, I want to come for you, and I hang up without saying it, and then I call you later from my bed and I end up saying it all anyway.

Swallowing those pills at night was now like playing Russian roulette; the blues were, for the first time in many years, the leading cause of drug deaths in Scotland, overtaking even heroin.

Between long sucks of her Newport, Jessalyn told me she was still so angry at her best friend for missing her wedding that she’d mailed her a box of crickets.

Crickets? I said.

Dead crickets.

My mother always says it was my father’s fault I couldn’t get along with anyone.

Pontypridd

When I was born, they thought I was dead. My grandmother, who could neither read nor write, plunged me into a tub of cold water. I got started after that.

My father was a coal miner

A tired black horse lies down in a field, and doesn’t get up again.