After the brief times I spent with her, my paintings would change for a short period. They were of a young world, greenly bright, a fresh wish. My feelings after being with her—excitement, then heaviness, a deep need for sleep—a sense of something pressing down on me that must be confronted.… Continue Reading
Katie thinks I need to be my best self, that’s what she’s about. She wants me to practice better routines, to have better strength throughout my day-to-day activities, if I’m to reach my new goals. These are keys to success Katie says. That is how I’ll reclaim the power I lost. People don’t understand. I wasn’t so good-looking or smart. But she saw the potential in me, like no one else did, and that’s why I’m hers for now. I’d like to think maybe even forever.… Continue Reading
Of course I have cancer. Of course my body has turned against me. I am a writer. We ruminate on the awful, yield to it, wield it into something beautiful even when it isn’t, I want to say. I say nothing.… Continue Reading
The CEO of our company is a serial killer. All my coworkers adore him.… Continue Reading
Bleeding was easy if you could get past the first flush of pain. The Exacto knife slipped into his skin like a single raindrop beading on his eyelashes. Death wasn’t an option so much as a flirtation.… Continue Reading
He sobbed as he thought of her thick shins and dimpled thighs and how organized she was with paying the bills. He fantasized about how the thick black hair that grew from the right corner of her top lip tickled him when they kissed and how she held him at night.… Continue Reading
Yes, there is love to gain, as we know. But there also is love to lose, and they rarely mention the misery gained from that. Gaining the misery might not even be worth gaining the love in the first place, but who’s to say that to the heartbroken?… Continue Reading
His eyes blinked like a machine gun’s stutter. He swirled his Chivas and mumbled something—I couldn’t hear it well over the racket of wild fucking in the bedroom. Maybe he said, “Mother would never have written that.”… Continue Reading
The day after your cousin’s funeral, you say you need to see a miracle, so we don our heavy coats, I usher you to the car, and we motor into the gray wintertime early afternoon that drains the world of color.… Continue Reading
Things I have in my pocket: a Zippo lighter with an iron cross given to me by my uncle who fought in the big war, a sense of self-doubt, a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, sense that the 90s were the best of us, a picture of you.
… Continue Reading