For Matthew
Today I am thinking of you and Michigan. Remember how back in the day I didn’t drink coffee? Well, I still don’t care for it much, but I find myself, like today, drinking it from time to time. Helene asks…
Tag: Short Story
Girls
You tell her you love her the day she graduates. It’s a carefree spring morning, the perfect kind for the endurance training you sometimes did— to build up stamina, because stage work was tougher than it looked. The past week…
Tallahassee Route
It never occurred to me how messy I can look. It’s almost finals week. I’ve been wearing my friend’s navy hoodie with noticeable white writing reading, “Aeropostale” on the front for the past three days. I have on rainbow colored…
In the Round Pen
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus on this moment. How do I feel? What am I seeing? What am I hearing? Him. Breathing in. Breathing out. Breathing in. Breathing out. Synchronicity. One. The clarity in his eyes…
Fall Cranes
Back home, my sister’s bedroom overlooked our back deck. She could climb out her windowsill and drop down a few feet onto the wooden planks below, landing on the balls of her feet so as not to give herself away….
Firework Girl
‘‘It’s okay to change your mind.’’ About feeling, a person, a promise of love. I can’t just stay to avoid contradicting myself. I don’t have to watch him cry. (142, Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl) While the terraces…
One
I can feel the evening sun, warm on my face, but the chill of the wind coaxes me to pull my coat tighter around me. I’m thankful for the forethought to wear a scarf. 7 years spent in this state…
Their Heads Came Falling Down
“I’m afraid your head will fall off,” Esme said. “What silly nonsense,” her friend replied. “No, this is serious,” Esme pushed. “I remember it happened when I was little.” “Bull. To who?” “In this book I got from the library….
Black Shrunken Blemish
When Frances had to speak publicly, her legs shook. As a kid, she had grown faster up than she had out and she had felt like two wooden stilts extended from her hipbones. “Growing like a weed!” her mother would…
A New World
While he sleeps I catalogue his body. When he is awake I keep my distance. While he dreams I touch and map in a fit of cartography. There, on his elbow is a scar where a mole was removed out…
Ride the Peter Pan
There were times when it seemed like all the beauty was sucked out of my life. This was one of them. It was cold and damp, early spring, and I was Greyhounding from my old life to my new; from…
Comatose (or You Don’t Know Where You Are)
You wake up. Are you dead? You don’t know where you are. Look around. There is a wide dirt road framed by tall, dark pine trees. What is this place? Grassy squares. Old, worn cabins grown into thick vegetation. Walk…
Dirt Road Dirtbags
It was Saturday. And I love Saturdays. My friend Libby’s dad takes her to church on Saturdays. And Polly’s dad takes her to museums. And Abigail’s dad takes her on picnics. But me and my dad are different because, on…
The Solution
I talk to myself. I have to. No one else will listen. No one else understands. Even if they did, I wouldn’t dare expose myself to them. They’re out to get me. They’re out to get you. Oh I know…
A Beggar’s Opera House
She was suspicious that everyone in the room was melting. The man sitting at the coffee table directly in her line of sight was watching his hands indifferently as they liquefied in pools on the table and dripped to the…
Social (Media) Distortion
I pursued him with a single minded determination that had been notably lacking in my previous endeavours. I wanted Richard to be mine like I craved my next breath, my next dream. He was a friend of a friend. When…
Blind Devotion
I jack off to one of the pictures of her I have saved on my computer and after I’m done I send her a message to tell her what I did. She likes that kind of stuff and I know she’d want to…
Lichtenberg Figures
The skin is the largest organ of the human body. It insulates and protects. It contains all we are. Fluids, muscles, tissues and bones, shuddering and rotating like machines beneath its thin surface. Its aspects are manifold. It regulates heat…
Wednesday
It’ll be a Wednesday. It’ll be cloudy outside. There will be fog creeping over the ravine and remnants of an early-morning rain still drifting in the air. You’ll ask me to come to your room. I’ll have no idea…
Ezzie Minus Zero
That day, Ezzie didn’t fantasize about leaving her husband the way she did every other day of the week, which when calculated, amounted to five prickly years of wishing. And where this feeling came from didn’t matter to her; what…