I love beginnings. The clack of the wheels on a roller coaster climb, the smell of cotton candy and grease.

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.

"Strange," "Rare Books," "New Suit," and "The Killer"

in this one you’re a six foot / two hundred pound prize

Why did Train A leave while Train B was still getting ready?

"Why This Pregnant Woman Walked Out of a Subway Restaurant in Tears" and "The Return of Sad Beck, Thank God"

"A Diaristic Quality but Everything Is Still Gone" and "Jonas Mekas at the Tate Modern"

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.

As Yoda sat on a tree stump, perfectly force-carved to complement his bony exterior and knobby joints, he realized that it had been five days in a row now that he had sat on this tree stump.

if i say 'i am sorry' to so-and-so...

Most people prefer the Vulcan statue...

We know we are eels.

it must have been the fifth...

Outside a window a stag picks at an apple core,
its antlers, tilted downwards, catch on a branch,
it stumbles, takes a breath, regains its footing.
                        A wooden sign—nondescript

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. 

Previously on...

Chapter 1a: Converging
Chapter 1b: Crisis 

I started high school miserable. By my sophomore year, I was looping Sinead O’Connor on my headphones, the album with “Nothing Compares to You” and “I am Stretched on your Grave,” and trying not to

"The Courtyard" and "Double Jeopardy"

In contrast to wild animals, pets are timelines left on the floor. These models of accelerated, abridged lives can be found to the right of the Lazy Boy and the magazine rack.

one from the spit where I watched them...

"He slept among a pile of used truck tires ..."

For as long as Mark could remember, he had wanted to save someone from a wolf. He had wanted it to happen in a specific way. Peculiar even.

Two cop cars nose to rear...

Song: “Seventeen”

You can’t skateboard over road work. But you can wipe your bloody hands on your jeans; blood doesn’t look right going down a drain. Later you see a twenty dollar bill on the

Not knowing was better than being disappointed. If I didn’t know what TGOYI meant, it could mean anything.

None of us have The Touch,

Though we have felt The Touch

*

We are all (all of us

Wearing leopard-print dusters Just once,

I was thirty hands tall (like one whole horse

Standing on