Only 498 words remain. So, let's turn to death.

From the time I was seven until I started taking Seroquel, an anti-psychotic, I had this unending feeling of doom.  ‘My go to’, be that of death.

Our waitress bustles around smiling a strangely huge smile for this boring work night. My boyfriend Nick and I don’t follow football and weren’t invited to any parties, and since most Texans are either holding or attending parties the place is pretty deserted. After the waitress brings our waters she follows her normal script and asks if we want to try a signature TGI Fridays drink, but her eyes keep dancing to the bar behind us.

I felt as cold and empty as that body lying in that casket lined with fabric smooth and silky white, so different from what usually cradled my grandma’s skin, those soft, oft-washed dresses always topped with a floral apron.

05:05 am. My eyes open. A faint pearly blade of light squeezing past the blind. The distant metallic scrape of a moving tram.   

i’ve never attended a wedding and i wasn’t going to start now. my muscles were aching and my jaw was carrying a million bees, terrorizing the sides of my ears and throat. 

There is snow that falls like a snake. It comes from the sky hissing and finds a bush to hide beneath. The leaves on the branches of the River Birch are alive, again, vibrating. They are brown and

“Well, just be careful you don’t get caught with your pants down at the wrong kinda toilet.”

Sometimes I want to take the industrial strength green Korean loofah, my sandpapery mitten, and just scrub at my face until huge chunks of flesh tear away and roll into brown fleshy noodles and fall to the floor. Afterwards, I won’t be bloody and flayed, all raw nerve endings and hamburger meat, I’ll be smooth as a peeled egg, soft and firm and pliant to the touch.

My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—

My father’s disjointed rage has shocked him—I’ve seen that look before. He no longer draws from his beer even as Dad tilts his own way up.

I am no longer youthful, but not quite middle aged either. Traces of a younger me are present, though fading.

Of course, Jesus only had hyssop—a bitter wine on a wet sponge—during the passion, but that was not an option at the concession stand.

When so much energy is spent on surveying the territory, adapting to the wonders and confusions of a new place, there isn’t always room to develop as a person.

Even when I had my brief zoology phase, in elementary school, I always preferred mammals.

I no longer have that lime green vibrator.

I will take an infestation, but only if it won’t spread.

Now, you book an appointment on a whim. But it’s not a whim. You’ve been thinking about this for a while.

Like the other day, when we got into a fight about who was the luckier between the two of us to have found the other.

For Caite’s Sweet 16 we get a couple rooms at the Motel 6 on Cerrillos, not the one downtown with the outdoor pool, the one on the southside between the strip club and the mall, and everyone can pay

On the contrary: I wanted people to see my spectacle. I wanted them to never forget it. Z had wondered: what if the joy of experiment dies with joy itself? If the relationship ends, what if we’re done with it forever?

I know brain damage.

When I was 22, my mother was excited for the first day at my new job, but not so much that she couldn’t wait to tell me about the demon that had attacked her in the night. 

Priorities.

They held

Sometimes I stop talking to my boyfriend for no reason.

I didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d last eaten. I also knew he needed water.