Aaliyah
Dr. Dolittle Soundtrack 
Track #3

Damn. This was the song—the song we danced to in perfect rhythm with each other. No words—just movement, and it was all in our shoulders. I never saw the

Going to work after you’ve been on an meth bender in a brothel is not a good idea,

Melanie is my yoga instructor. Sometimes she’s pregnant, other times not. Her voice is soothing in a way that would annoy me under other circumstances, like a preschool teacher without a preschool

Sangria at a soup shop. Pieces of peach and apple in the wine. The skin of the fruits unpeeled in my mouth. Sangria even though it was winter, early evening, cold and already dark out. Goblet-sized,

It’s a Tuesday at 3 pm, which means it’s time for my therapist to remind me that I am a victim of a violent crime.

The house on Olean street stands as it once did, a formerly bright white house, the sidings been torn off, revealing dark greenish-black shingles. This house, the black sheep of the neighborhood.

My father locked his children up in a house for years for fear that they would die of pesticides from plants. More than that, we were locked in our rooms with a gate.

There’s a story my father used to tell from his days as an ER resident. An old lady showed up for care, and when he asked her what had brought her in, she calmly raised a hand, showing him her palm. It was pierced straight through with a long darning needle.

Bet you’ve only made lahmajoon from scratch once. Bet you’ve made pierogi dough once. Bet your attempts at grandma’s pilaf recipe are crunchy and undercooked, noodles burnt, stuck to the bottom of the pot.

I approached looking at thirst traps like I did those Magic Eye 3D posters I’d stared at as a kid. If I stared long enough, I believed, I could see something real in those thirst traps.

One day, I end up on the side of the road next to a bobcat who is thrashing after being hit by a car.

I -- Book

In every house of our memories, there is a book. In the basement of mine, there is a paperback with pictures of the sea. 

The underwater camera is smeared with the blurriness of

Bread has its own history, its own holiness. Flour was pounded from prehistoric plants then roasted on the hot stones of Neanderthal fires. Ancient Egyptians milled grain between giant rocks, dark, mixed flour, imperfect loaves with heady scent.

The first six months I took hormones I was frumpy and ridiculous looking. I didn’t know anything about makeup or styling

Because you are ten, pink skin streaked with freckles and sunscreen, sea salt on your lips as you run your tongue around your ice-cream, and a man with a grey wire moustache puts his hand on your leg and asks your mum when he can marry you, and the sand of his handprint sticks to your skin no matter how hard and raw you scrub it.

Tasmanian devils (yes they are real animals) give birth to about 40 babies at a time but they only have four teats and so what that means is that the first four babies that make it to those four teats are the only ones that survive and do you know what happens next?

Tim tells me that broke up is strong language to use. I wonder how he would describe our ending. Broke up implies an entity to be broken, but we never made it that far. I still don't know what we

Our return to campus one evening to discover spray-painted in black on the university’s entrance wall, “ICI ZOO ETRANGER” (HERE IS THE FOREIGN ZOO).

Conscious of your eyes on me, but unwilling to let you derail my mission, I whispered to myself, “You’ve ungently, Brutus…”

We go from ecstatic to great to good to therapy. I go to bed numb and wake up furious. I leave you for the couch every night. Is year seven always like this? When Marilyn Monroe makes a movie about

At bedtime as a child, I once asked my mother which of us would die first. She explained to me that mothers are supposed to die before their children.

I was with a Serbian who said, “Tonight is about your pleasure,” so I was doing great.

It is December 21, 2020, the night of the Great Conjunction. For the first time since the 1600s, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest to each other they’ve ever been. NASA says you’ll be able to

To the left of the counter stands a dead rat on its hind legs, taxidermied, with one front paw extended and one middle finger raised. An insult that looks like benediction. A pair of antlers sit atop

I’ve been trying to find this quote by Chris Kraus from Aliens & Anorexia I think, but the quote is nowhere in my notebooks, even though I remember writing it down obsessively.