In early June of the never-ending 2020, I attended an anti-curfew, anti-police terror demonstration in my hometown of Oakland, California.

It was a warm evening as myself and a couple friends

Junior year of college, he touched the scab on the crease of my mouth where concealer failed me. I get these in the winter too, he said, and then, I have a cream.

It’s all about the timing

It’s as simple and invasive as a chime on my phone. A banner news alert, which, for most people, involves elections and wars and natural disasters and celebrity

Seventeen days since you spoke your last words to me. They repeat themselves in my mind, I never want to forget them.

I am not a pinch, a spoonful, a half a cup of light rivering down into the stomach where, I should know, the heart truly resides.

George Simmons used to sling crack on 42nd St.—why his uptown boys always called him The Midtown Turn. Now he’s 54—and everybody calls him Pop. He’s been running the streets for decades. “The streets

I didn’t turn around because I wasn’t entirely sure my name was being called and even so there was no one I wanted to talk to on the street in the middle of this particular Tuesday.

And yet, and yet, from the rear pew of my mind came a rude slurping as my straw probed the ice of a Pepsi.

We get back together, because of course we do. He is better, now. Therapy helps both of us.

Dan texted his wife before going on the ventilator. She shares most things on Facebook, and she has disclosed this last message, too.

Tom Selleck, in his best reverse mortgage voice, volunteers to call your parents and break the news that their daughter almost died. Your mom is happy to hear from him since she always liked Magnum P.I.

She arrived at my apartment at 3 a.m. with a soft suitcase on her head, a handle positioned over one eye. I could see the netting in her matted blonde wig. Her broken eyeliner and stained lips

After we finish doing the dinner dishes together, Mario heads into the living room and picks up the remote control.

“Guess what?” he says, turning on the TV. “New Zealand is playing England in

I saw into the face tattooed on his thigh and thought, I am not afraid.

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

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.