Under the pretense of repairing things, I go to prove I am not broken.

I will never read this essay out loud, so let me take some risks:

Almond, salmon, Episcopal, peony, Adidas, melancholy, mischievous.

In my head: Owl-mund, sal-MON, epic-SKO-poll.

I add force

I’ve never run for political office and have no desire to run—which is not to say that I’ve never thought about it—but I do know what it is to move, to travel, to traverse, to go around for the sake of one’s ambitions.

When I mention this flash of sexual fluidity to people, it bothers them.

Felt, for a minute, like some façade had slipped, like a glitch in the matrix. Is this in fact the car we came in? Are we who we think we are?

When I was dead, I returned to my father’s house, an old farmstead in Northwestern Ohio, and I stood alone in the gravel drive, satisfied to see that the house was just as I remembered it—small and gray, rising on a plot of land west of a moonlit apple orchard.

in davis at the ceramics conference

on the Easter Bunny’s lap
a polaroid of my heavy bangs

smiles and my mother swears
I loved that bunny so much

I wouldn’t leave the store
to visit

The curtains opened, the ballerinas emerged, toes became violins, hands, trumpets, backs, cellos.

I have decided to hate you for 100 days
As soon as I figure out the first day

The old man kicked us out after the fight.

I don’t write “I have the libido of a sloth” in my online dating profile. I don’t use my real surname now either.

The Class of 1953 Tachikawa Air Base Bride School girls were fertile, well-fed and rested.

i wanna drift like they do...

“And then after I came out to my wife, she stumbled across People Can Change,” said the man from Fresno.

Don’t they let you? Don’t they ever let you lay down your head?

The mushrooms I bought yesterday are moldy; the lines around my mouth have deepened. Tomorrow I am a mother for the first time.

Previously on...
Part 6  ||  Part 5  ||  Part 4  ||  Part 3  ||  Part 2  ||  Part 1  ||  Prologue

I Googled things that bond people. Google said trauma.

We’ve sat in pot smoke-filled basements, watching boys play video games, and I’ve sipped wine with my parents on special occasions, but neither of us have been to an actual party before.

Ken pounded out three novelty songs on his busted up acoustic guitar, looking like a knock-off Daniel Johnston.