The Big, Mangy One
I am transfixed with the probability of earthquakes.
...moreI am transfixed with the probability of earthquakes.
...moreI want to know more of what it is like to feel lost and not always have someone there to tell me how to find my way. Or, to tell me my way.
...moreThat cafe smelled like fresh-baked bread and cookies, and the baristas were all women with warm, soft hands who called everyone — the Senator, the mothers, the babies, the businessmen — Honey. So many baristas would have called you Honey, David. And swayed along with you when they played Perfume Genius during the slow hours. The day after someone […]
...moreNo word is wasted. No story is told in vain.
...moreThen there is the bathroom issue. My beloved is like me, like you, like anyone. Sometimes a person has to go.
...moreLet’s be clear: There is no hangover cure. Anyone who claims to have never had a hangover is either a) a liar, b) a teetotaler, or c) a responsible drinker. I’m none of those things, most days, despite effort, and the number of times I’ve searched for “how to cure a hangover” in the harsh light of a weekend morning is embarrassing the older I get, so manage your expectations.
...moreBoys were boys and girls were girls and gender norms were there for a reason. We didn’t realize the reason was to keep women down. Maybe we just didn’t care.
...moreUsing opioids while maintaining my sobriety became a skill that I continued to develop over the following couple of years. The irony—finally becoming capable of moderating my drug use—was not lost on me.
...moreWe baked a fresh bowl for dinner?, I wonder. Do you think the pen will sink or grow? Do you think a pen will sink or throw? Sure. This could be a very delightful exercise (for poets), I think to myself.
...moreThere is still light in the dark. This is the paradox that Little Bear has to accept in order to fall asleep.
...moreFor seven years I’d met the perfect man in fall, dated him for three months, then wailed as Fate plucked out my heart and devoured it, whole and beating. (Only to grow back and be eaten again twelve months later.) This was some Prometheus-level bullshit.
...moreLooking at the two stems housed in a water glass on my kitchen table, it strikes me that “in the ground” means opposite things for flowers and people. As long as a flower remains in the ground, it lives. “Poppies are incredible,” my friend Monika, a floral designer, tells me. “Even after they’re cut they […]
...moreI want to tell her that Hunter is Hunter and Daisy is Daisy and both should be allowed to breathe. I want to tell her I know the instinct to split yourself in half, too, that I know the violence required to hold your true self in shadow, that I have another name I only dare whisper.
...moreAfter all these years, I know now that what felt like rebirth to me had felt like—had been—near-death for them.
...more“So it’s a surprise to you—and not entirely a pleasant one—when you fall in love with someone who has a penis. You thought you’d set up defenses against the possibility, but here he is, and here you are, loving him.”
...moreIt’s always been ground glass, scraping against my insides. I imagine a light held to the place where I open would illuminate a mess of torn flesh, throbbing red-wet.
...moreThe path down to the riflery range was steep and winding, littered with roots.
...moreAs the camera zooms out to show CARTOON BROOKE’s full body, the funk music kicks back in.
...moreMy father didn’t like my movie choices. He said they weren’t realistic. He’d been in the Air Force and was deployed in Vietnam. He’d brought back his own war stories.
...moreI pushed him so he glided through the fish, the eels, the boxed-in worlds of blues.
...moreI find beauty in being protected from danger.
...moreHow does one come to feel American in the eyes of others?
...moreI feel guilt in the not good enough I carry alongside the not bad enough.
...moreThe faces of the students appeared one by one, both there and not.
...moreThe mother, too, is a monument. I am haunted by mine.
...moreThis made sense to me. Body + stressor = reaction.
...moreThe only thing different about Dan Cooper was his bomb.
...more