I was so used to the silence of late summer afternoons, when I could roll my hoop through the empty, sunlit piazzas without meeting another shadow, that at first I mistook the footsteps for the beat of a metronome spilling through an open window.

He injected her with a sedative to keep her still. He projected himself into her narcotic dream, a small bar with tango playing from a jukebox. They were dancing.

I felt the most afraid I’ve ever felt in my life, like all the unknowns in the universe were rushing through me at once.

they tried to trick the sun

my hands splash in to silver and suds in attempts to rinse blues caked in grease away for a while

He did not hear her enter the room...

Christmas Muzak was piped through to every store in the shopping mall. Giant red velvet bows adorned reproduction Victorian gaslights. Yards of glittered cotton pretended to be snow. A Santa rang a brass bell.

...Truth is, it’s because of fabulously wealthy men and women like myself who long ago sucked all the cream out of the bottle, and now we’re coming back for whatever milk remains.

Don’t break things, I add. And he looks at me like I’ve broken everything else.

...I’m honest enough to know that fucking around has never been accidental or unplanned. Every time I did it, even in the rock bottom throes of esteem, sobriety, and life, yes, even on the brink of suicide, I knew exactly what I was doing...

We all thought, Birds! We all thought, Nests inside the chimney!

Because you alone must know how to make a smile shine at me and be like the sun, I can only feel its warm and coolish colors becoming that perfectly deepened yellow then on to the red if you please that makes a shy kind of blue out of day. That…

Wednesdays were humiliating. Third graders had to bring in twenty-five cents for class dues. If you forgot, the teacher would write your name on the board and it would stay there until you settled your debt. My family could afford the weekly quarter; the problem was…

Licking my wounds. That's what my mother calls it. I'm not really sure what that means or if it's true. Sure, losing your boyfriend, apartment and job in a matter of months can drive someone to do something impulsive. Something crazy. But I've always b

Dearest Z— There is no way to describe this place. It is a pendulum, caught at mid-swing or maybe just a millimeter on the up side. It is a sense of sweeping, a cleanness. Distant clouds remind me of the day we took the train and the mountains acted petulantly,…