Sometimes in group we play a game. We call it survivor though it’s usually the opposite. I win a lot because people have funny ideas about that word.… more
Sometimes in group we play a game. We call it survivor though it’s usually the opposite. I win a lot because people have funny ideas about that word.… more
I don’t know how to describe to this little boy that I’m not Santa, I’m just a 30-year-old guy without a chimney or a roof. That I sometimes rest my head on a friend’s couch for a day or even a week if I’m lucky. That I got this stint because of my friend who works here as kitchen staff.… more
Looking away was a breath of fresh air. A breath like the first after drowning, or after a passionate strangling by a pair of cold and dormant hands. Hands they’d rather not recall.… more
Everyone on my new planet grows from what resembles a cactus flower. They bud and sprout. They unfold and then they begin the business of being loved and loving back. They cry when I tell them about money.… more
The bookshelf, crowded with urns full of past cats’ ashes: Ajax, Echo, Luna, and Midnights 1 through 3. The Papillon in my lap licking my bloody knuckles. The hole I punched in the wall next to the TV after watching the evening news.… more
He doesn’t tell them that tomorrow is a hole so deep it cannot be measured. He doesn’t mention how he beats his his chest to try to excise the grief that sits there so stubbornly. He doesn’t because he is tired of the gooey treacle of sympathetic smiles.… more
The police said his feet got tangled in seaweed. He was drunk and they said it was probably peaceful, something I never believed. I’m sure the water sobered him up and he fought to the end, just like he did any time people called me a freakazoid.… more
My girlfriend and I made a deal: she could go back to Boston but I got to keep her head. She did the severing and everything—I just watched. Held her hand because I knew it’d be a while ‘til I could hold it again. It unnerved me how dry it was.… more
Tonight love looks like burning worms and black smoke.… more