The man had been simmering with rejection since his early teens, and the rat stirring the pot came at a price.… Continue Reading
A Christmas card from Dad’s boss arrived with a picture of his family, all of them gleaming, with the dad and three sons with matching blue-velvet bow ties and straight teeth with no gaps. If my teeth were like theirs, I’d smile for pictures too.… Continue Reading
When the car hits you, it’s not true that you don’t feel it right away. You definitely do. You absolutely do. Strangely enough, it’s your teeth that hurt the worst.… Continue Reading
M says this doesn’t seem safe. What do you know about safe? I say. I’m going to go take a hot bath. I’m going to listen to jazz! She says, OK, but why are you already naked?… Continue Reading
How did people just say things to each other about love like it was normal? Like they weren’t opening a giant gaping wound in themselves for someone else to kick apart even further? What did any of it mean anyways? What made people loveable and normal—two things he never equated himself with?… Continue Reading
Somehow she’s sneaked into the room and found the bottles I’d hidden under the desk when I still had a job. She’s built her own game, lining the bottles, coalescing them together in a triangle, raising one layer on top of another, a glass pyramid glinting guilt and shame. … Continue Reading
The sounds, always the four sounds. I’d been in bed for the better part of a month and they wouldn’t leave me alone. Rubber slapping rubber made a whoosh. Then metal scraping asphalt in a scream. Then his head hitting the ground with a hollow thud. Then another scream. The girl behind me.… Continue Reading
Because the boys on the street beat your skinny ass and called you bastard. Because the man in the suit and stethoscope said he was your dad but only stayed long enough to give your feverish twin sulfa. Because you and your brother fought the street rats with garbage can lids and sticks. Because the Chicago Nazis beat up your brother.… Continue Reading
He realizes now that was a stupid thing to have said. It feels imperative that he go to Cambodia and apologize to Gen say the right thing. He should have said he loved her. Maybe he should have said she wasn’t a whore. He didn’t fucking know.… Continue Reading
Pierre Freeman was an artist, raconteur and dancer, destitute and a drunk. He tatted his hair to thick dreadlocks that flattened into the shape of oak leaves. He smoked weed, but never paid for it. He spoke with a Jamaican accent even though he had never been out of Minnesota.… Continue Reading