A flipped boat, he clings to the metal bench seat slick with mossy water, his feet spasming in the unknown depths below him. Because at sixteen, there’s something fucked up about not knowing how to float or tread water. He had skipped swimming lessons because he couldn’t imagine a world where he wouldn’t know how […]
Each Death Gets Us Closer Read More »
I hugged you, and I hugged you again before you stepped out that door. Did I warn enough about the monsters? I didn’t want to make you worry. Maybe I should have. But now you’re gone. Out in the wild world, armed with nothing but laptop and laundry bag, books, and posters. With nothing to
Mother, Shift, Mother Read More »
B e watchful of voices that shout shouldn’t, mustn’t, don’t. They said she shouldn’t climb up the fire escape and whisper conversations with the night sky. It was one thing to perch on the roof’s edge, feet dangling, and look down on the city below, taking in the glow of neon lights. But who was
The Wise Internal Voice Read More »
I cy wind rattled the coffee shop windows. The string of fairy lights outside the storefront shook, striking the glass in a repeating tink, tink, tink, like the drumming of skeletal fingers. Darkness came early this time of year, but the shop was lit with the soft glow of many stained-glass lamps. It felt safe.
T here was no room for fear at the circus. As infants, my sister Jenny and I learned to walk by balancing our child-soft legs on the gravity-defying materials of tightwires and bouncing ropes. We were birds, a fear of tumbling
Ghosts of Circus Past Read More »
I wake to the sound of bleating. What the fuck? While still half asleep, I crawl out of bed at–what–2:36 am? I grab my phone and the Swiss Army knife I keep on the bedside table and lumber down the stairs. I make as much noise as possible to scare any
Goats in the Boiler Room Read More »
A woodsman gave me a ride for the last few miles. He was surprised to find a young woman on the mountain path. “You’re a student?” he said. “From Piarista gymnazium,” I said. “Where the witch burning happened last week,” he said. “Awful stuff.” We passed through small settlements; the path wound up through the
W hen P-XIE refused to justify her surgery, the reporter asked if it was so she could marry a fish. Her publicist cut the interview off. But that became the story. Pop Icon Gone Fishing: Are Real Men Not Good Enough for P-XIE? Three months later, on a sun-soaked Saturday afternoon outside Saint Louis,
Popstar Mermaid in a Trash Storm Along the Mississippi Read More »
D avid loved untaxed Bauhaus steel. Especially when it was at a Vancouver 6.7 percent discount. If he included the security envelope with fifty one-dollar bills, the total cost of two coffee tables, a new kitchen table, and matching bedside lamps was $9,650. Sure, his five-year-old daughter, Elise–who he’d coached not to say a word
For the Love of Fries Read More »
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