From the Archive: The Dark All Around Us
There is still light in the dark. This is the paradox that Little Bear has to accept in order to fall asleep.
Essays
170 posts
The Three-Month Curse
For 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.
The Flowers You Left Us
Looking 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…
Play for Camera
I 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.
The Divine Aquatic
After all these years, I know now that what felt like rebirth to me had felt like—had been—near-death for them.
You Keep Everything Outside
"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."
From the Archive: Unbound
It’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.
Bad Brain Blues: Disclosing an Invisible Disability
As the camera zooms out to show CARTOON BROOKE’s full body, the funk music kicks back in.
A Childhood Story
My 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.
Joe at the Aquarium
I pushed him so he glided through the fish, the eels, the boxed-in worlds of blues.