Reason for rescue? What does that mean? Cause it was dying, I don't know. What do you want me to say?

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.

There wasn’t a bike rack because car people owned this town. You locked up to telephone poles covered in missing cats and hoped your chain stayed chained. In the shadows of rusting delivery trucks the

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...

In my Sunday dress, I suckled water from the Baskin Robbin’s water fountain — the one nearest to the men’s restroom. My father sat at a table a few feet away, writing notes in his Bible for his next

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

This is a story you’ve heard before. There’s a girl, let’s call her a young woman, with [blond / brown] hair and [blue / brown] eyes. Maybe you say these details are unimportant, but you know how they

"Two Men Dancing" and "Gloaming: August"

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 

January

Your friends want to go out for New Year’s. You do not.

They prod and cajole you: come on, it’ll be fuuuuuuun.

It’s not that you don’t like going out. You will more than happily join

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

Thunderstorms form in dense, towering vertical clouds. The necessary factors for a storm to develop are moisture, rising unstable air, and a lifting mechanism. A single bolt of lightning is five times

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

When we worked together at his father’s diner, Tom drove an old minivan; green body with red doors. He would crank the window down and idle outside my front door. He wore a blue bandana rolled up and