I packed into this room during my second year's semester break of university. For all the years before, I slept with my mother upstairs. Our building is a three-story building built with rocks and

Before the landline was obsolete, Nathan and I lived for late night 272-DATE commercials, our city’s own hotline of lust. You had to be 18 or older to call and of course we weren’t, yet I knew to make

The diary didn’t have many entries, but it revealed how lonely Sarah had felt.

For a few years, before Carl’s dad won a scratch-off ticket and no one ever saw him again, I called Carl my best friend.

Hey girl, heard you’re on the job hunt—and the place I work is hiring! It’s a bit weird, but… Do you want to be a matchmaker? 

We lost my dad somewhere under the blacklights of Club Tabu.

My happiest memories all involve an intense desire to be strangled. 

I do not want to talk about how I need to drink more water. The Doctor in Her Eighth Year of Practice has already told me, in so many words, that the life I save might be my own.

after fiona apple

i've waited many years— i didn’t know i was waiting— my myself waited til no one was looking, and it ran, and it ran and— 

all my selves run from me. when i look up they’re

Mama says mad freezes your face, so little girls with feelings be careful. Anger shows ugly over time, lines between your brows or pulling down the corners of your mouth. Girls should smile, say

On Sunday morning, at eight central in middle Tennessee, I watch the Grand Prix. This season is the 70th anniversary of the FIA Formula One World Championship, which feels like enough of a reason to

1955

Nothing is earned unless something is lost. You lost your father in a car accident, as mommy explained. You are less than a year old and don’t have language for anything, much less grief. The

When Michael left for the West, I experienced what in Portuguese is known as saudade, an intense nostalgia for a person.

The first time I went rock climbing, I lasted 30 minutes.

I smile now, waiting, always waiting, for you to reappear and remember me ...

I once let the person I loved prick my ribcage with a needle a thousand times so I wouldn’t forget. A collection of dots arcing messily into two black brackets.

I am writing you now from a city we scored with nomadic walking fourteen months ago. During that trip I had been ill. 

In this dappled language, like a woods painted by Neil Welliver, in and out of our attention, animals wander in the camouflage. They are highlighted by our attention: each stands in a yellow bar of

I grew up in the predominantly all-white neighborhood of Warwick, Rhode Island; I was one of only two Black kids in my elementary, junior high, and high schools. I dressed well, presented myself well, got good grades.

My friends and I would see you on the streets and say you looked like a villain. Slicked back black hair, tall and thin, distrusting gaze, but handsome. All sinister swagger.

1985: the year of “high-risk” and Careless Whispers. His appearance was brief —lasting all of ten second— but there he was, following an interview between Debbie Harry and Nick Rhodes on the Palladium. 

You turn to face me, apologize for the mountain, for not drinking enough water, for not letting me turn back to make sure you were safe at a lower elevation. For not realizing what this would do to me.

Last Christmas, you asked for my latest address and sent a postcard all the way from Paris. There was a close-up shot of Hemingway’s face on the front. On the back, you wrote: “You deserve all the good in the world.” I took a picture of it but never sent anything back.

I like sex in fiction to be full of ambivalence—undeniable lust mixed with doubt or disgust. I have done things with lovers I don’t want to tell anyone.