No bravado. No jeering. Just you under the hot sun realizing God ain’t doling out mercy that day. Only pain as currency for community. There’s no ego death without blood and suffering.… Continue Reading
How did his “moving girl” 3-year-old turn into a 17-year-old who never leaves her bed for whole days? He thinks partly there’s a thousand different reasons for that, thinks partly there’s no reason at all, just something that happened organically and can’t be explained.… Continue Reading
The kid sets the ring back down on the counter. He looks down at his sneakers, unwilling to make eye contact. “I just need some quick cash. But I’ll be back, yeah, maybe as soon as next week, to buy back that ring.” He takes a deep breath, scratches at his arm.… Continue Reading
He picked up a strip of bacon and dragged it through the yolk until it bled. He took a bite and let himself enjoy it. For a moment, he quit thinking about failure and divorce and dead-end towns. Just ate his breakfast like a man with nowhere else to be.… Continue Reading
It was a tragedy of what-if’s: a lifeline not particularly interrupted but partially rubbed out to continue as what? a sideshow always placed on the peripherals and pitied? He wanted a girlfriend and wore this search like his disability wore him.… Continue Reading
Of all of the food and treats Kelso had eaten in his nearly thirteen years, the one thing we had never given him was chocolate, but on this, his final day, he partook. He loved it, of course. It’s fucking chocolate.… Continue Reading
There is no going back. I found the break in the flesh. I resharpen the knife to be sure I don’t have any parts caught in the blade. The parts left untouched for show are the gills, where it worked hardest to live.… Continue Reading
Lenny puts away his copy of The North American Actuarial Journal and basks in what he’s done. Little red-haired Leonard Reister, detester of gym class and organized sports, human punching bag at Harrison Elementary School, has become a hero.… Continue Reading
“Ever give a massage to a big fat dude?” he asks, which is the most Midwestern thing you can say, even in the most Midwestern bar in San Diego. … Continue Reading
What is more singularly human than to adorn our lives with objects. Objects that accompany us to a time bastardized by memory, that remind us in our isolation of people we can no longer hold. That split us open at the hinges and leave us bare to the world.… Continue Reading