Jul, 24 2018 | no responses
She wanted to be someone normal. Watch television until noon on the weekends. Practice soccer in the backyard so she could finally make the B team. Invite a friend over and make a slip and slide with the old tarp in the basement.
Apr, 27 2018 | no responses
After my daughter’s birth in 2002, there were nights I sat in the rocking chair next to her crib, understanding that the world would be better if I killed myself. And her. I’d grip the arms of the chair and flex every muscle in my body to stop myself. One night, I walked into the room where her father was reading and sat on the edge of the bed beside him. I admitted I had no feelings—for him, for her, for myself—but that we could be friends; we could raise her together. We’d be fine. Our lives would be fine.
Feb, 26 2018 | no responses
My family didn’t move to these places, but their shapes, their possible breaths, bumped against my own history, my immediate future, parallel universes that might suddenly rope around my present, palpitating self.
Feb, 26 2018 | no responses
I met the principal at a bar called the Eternal Cellar. I bet you can already picture how it looked: “dank” would be the best word to describe it. They kept the Jim Beam on the top rail. If you were foolish enough to put your hand on the bar, it stuck.
Feb, 26 2018 | no responses
we shouted out of car windows / uttered our incomplete goodbyes // see you later, Shifting Inlet / or whatever good friends say // who haven’t known each other long—
Feb, 26 2018 | no responses
What whispers suckle, tugs / spines upright, name god. // Acolytes—mice sniffing / a wet breeze, blouse milk- // soaked at an infant’s cry, / universe ever expanding.
Oh cosmic through line,
teach the weaker sex your
bruising grip.