I don’t fully recall when I realized that the smoke detector was going off

Other times it’s about motels in Nebraska or 
gum ball machines or a close-up of a woman’s 
face.

But reach for it . . .

Tempestuous is the language we carry in our head, the music of new words and lovers, the cities we dip into on a lost weekend. Jeanne, the eponymous narrator of Arielle Burgdorf’s novel Jeanne,

It is the night before I will meet my future ex wife. Neither of the mirrors are skinny.

Silent, except for the clock.

It was summer heat 
And the breath of living someone else’s life 

I have been waiting to become a better writer so that I can understand them.

(Checking texts over lunch) Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon. That’s how my brain works.

The forecast predicted devastation,
So I scattered sandbags around my house,
Closed the window,
And waited for the deluge.
Fingers gripped my hair and
Yanked me back like a bucking

If I read Pan before I started taking Lexapro I would’ve cried.

I was a woman obsessed, before and after the overdose.

Liam refuses to speak to me now. Because, for once, I took action. Non-violent-action. Well, a series of actions, actually, the first of which was to invite him out for drinks when he came home for winter break.

At this remark, her forehead crinkled, and it was clear that she hadn’t remembered their previous meeting. This should have come as no surprise to Lyle, who had lived forty-three-years of un-memorability. His style of dress unremarkable, his height medium, his face neither handsome nor ugly...

The thing about being a lesbian in New York City is that on the third Thursday of any given month you’ll have to stand in a hot Brooklyn bar that is absolutely teeming with gay people. At least four

Cragged rock reaches skyward, gaps in the green either burn scars or metamorphic bands. 

When I get home, I buy the rateyourboyfriend.com domain name for the $900 upfront fee

Darren had dropped out of art school after just six weeks, but he still insisted on referring to everything as his “practice”. Right now his practice involved sending fan letters to alt-lit

Poet, activist, and educator Anthony Thomas Lombardi absolutely slays the page in his debut collection murmurations from YesYes books. It is a collection steeped in survival and song—with the iconic Amy Winehouse at its center, the patron saint of the collection, Lombardi revels in variations of doomed beauty, over and over, until there is nothing left but sacred stain.

Pinging sounds. Low electric drone.