Jimmy had the face of a Labrador Retriever all dogless girls know from childhood that belonged to a friend or a neighbor but of course was never theirs so that when the girls looked in Jimmy’s eyes they saw something like home but better, and if they had to guess, they’d say that is probably why they listened to him at all.… Continue Reading
Perhaps it’s my time, and this meeting wasn’t chance. Time now to stop the carousel, another chance to quit? But I’m shredded to raw seeing that girl with her dad, and the monster inside me is screaming for help. He knows the best medicine to treat an old wound.… Continue Reading
The only place in town where nobody recognizes me is submerged deep in the Burger King ball pit. Whoppers make me woozy, and balls-deep is a scary feeling, but I feel most alive after a bloated somersault, marooned upside-down in a padded box six feet below an orgy of kaleidoscopic hollow plastic balls with my stomach full of melted American cheese.… Continue Reading
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