Before the landline was obsolete, Nathan and I lived for late night 272-DATE commercials, our city’s own hotline of lust. You had to be 18 or older to call and of course we weren’t, yet I knew to make

The diary didn’t have many entries, but it revealed how lonely Sarah had felt.

I saw her in front of us then, and she struck me: white parka down to mid-calf meeting white Ugg boots, white hood drawn over head.

Usually I’d just as soon look away from cruelty, but Lemuel flung that chicken square at my face and my first instinct was to swat her, fretting her clipped wings and shrieking like a raspy old woman, down on the heads of the others. Simple reflex.

He didn’t even try to hide it. This subtle grooming disguised as a peace offering. Young and cool and cultured, he was the new priest from the Mediterranean, with an accent and a peculiar way of

But here, in the house at the edge of the ocean, there is no camera, and so Mrs. Brody awaits her lover. 

For a few years, before Carl’s dad won a scratch-off ticket and no one ever saw him again, I called Carl my best friend.

We laughed when he called it a “Shake-n-Bake,” but then looked nervously around the room; the crew veterans weren’t laughing.

Hey girl, heard you’re on the job hunt—and the place I work is hiring! It’s a bit weird, but… Do you want to be a matchmaker? 

Charlie would never cannibalize me; he’d have nothing to eat. 

We lost my dad somewhere under the blacklights of Club Tabu.

My happiest memories all involve an intense desire to be strangled. 

I posted a picture of my rarely used kayak on Facebook late at night.

I do not want to talk about how I need to drink more water. The Doctor in Her Eighth Year of Practice has already told me, in so many words, that the life I save might be my own.

A New Year’s resolution that I wasn’t going to do this anymore, soon broken.

A Valentine’s Day spent alone, while you were where you were supposed to be.

A summer weekend in the Hamptons, the

let us use the Fibonacci sequence to understand
why 10 coffins became boats atop the surface of Alum Creek on Christmas Eve

and why Mamaw spent all of 2015 saying bell-bottoms were coming

This boy has never been in love. He takes his phone to bed, a ghost or a third hand, he can’t say. Can anyone, anymore, the world being what it is? 

He yearns as the hours creep. Desperate to mimic

after fiona apple

i've waited many years— i didn’t know i was waiting— my myself waited til no one was looking, and it ran, and it ran and— 

all my selves run from me. when i look up they’re

Mama says mad freezes your face, so little girls with feelings be careful. Anger shows ugly over time, lines between your brows or pulling down the corners of your mouth. Girls should smile, say

On Sunday morning, at eight central in middle Tennessee, I watch the Grand Prix. This season is the 70th anniversary of the FIA Formula One World Championship, which feels like enough of a reason to

Maybe I’d hang out in the locker room and find someone who would treat me better. Maybe I’d go to Taco Bell and eat in the parking lot.

This is the Santa crushing it on Etsy.

This is the Santa denied unemployment.

This is the Santa whose Zoom background brought his therapist to tears.

This Santa doesn’t give a shit—he’s a

We’re spinning Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas in our den, a small extension the previous owner built by dry-walling in the original porch's 1959 concrete border. We erected

First, I visited my father’s house. After I returned home, my mother asked me to bring her there in the dark of night. We got on the highway, drove north, then took the second exit, but that was all I

She lives with her mom

two states away

and I wish this was all

I've failed to teach her.