there was nothing special in the Library of Alexandria

One day at the school for disturbed children I attended, a boy lit his pubes on fire.

There’s something so sexy about a hot girl apologizing for my behavior.

Toothpaste dripped and stained the rubber grip. The bristles were yellowed, fanned out and frayed, like a spiky cleaning tool that should go nowhere near the mouth. Some of the bristles were actually hairs.

The first thing I killed was a coyote. Grandpa pointed out that the coyote was a mother. Her belly sagged a few inches above the grass. Her front right leg caught in a wire trap. Grandpa handed me his

At night, we lay on unmoored mattresses, pressing hands over our eyes to block out spears of light from the street. We cursed our naked windows.

What the Mother wanted to show us might be different from what we wanted to see.

“My grandma drinks that,” the kid ahead of me at Duane Reade snarks at my six-pack of Ensure bottles.

It does not make any noise but it works.

Blisters is a game where you sit on the floor on either side of a candle and hold little fingers like a pinky swear above the flame until someone lets go.
 

It’s me and Helena. Helena and me.

My fantasy of Lockwood started to deflate like a balloon with a tiny hole.

this one guy keeps trying to talk about the impoverished state of the arts which among other things is making me desperately want to do the drugs I brought

Zack was total destruction, demonic possession.

A diagram shows a mother with porn-star proportions holding her breast, pinching the nipple, milking herself into the cylinder. Squirt, Shake, Wait, the directions tell me.

Her robe came open; it was like hugging an ice sculpture swan. I shivered.

She feels bad for being taken aback before; she really is a very nice doctor.

The attic room in the student town of Ordrecht went for 365, 52 euros monthly, not including the safety-deposit, called borg in Dutch.

“Lucky boy, just too late. Because we have crisis in Holland,

In the mornings, the woman sees her husband off to work in her night dress, sometimes with curlers in her hair. After he leaves, she always lights a cigarette and stands with the glass-paned storm door cracked open. I can tell the inside of their house smells like knock-off Estée Lauder and menthol smoke.

In the anatomy lab, we are peeing into cups to check for any abnormalities within the urine

I was outside of time. Teensy amoebic televisions snowed in my eyes. My throat felt like burnt hair.

I fucked his heart, ruined the fitted sheets,
flamingos left erect in a pool of afternoons

My professor is French. You can tell by her voice, and because she just told us that she and her husband met through adultery, as if it was an app on your phone.

Emily was mine first.

other byproducts are produced
sticky sweat, the stink of loneliness

Sarah has just been promoted at the publishing house, and I realize she thinks she is doing her job at this party