Tim and I were in bed together when he saw the spoon. I’d accidentally left the closet open, I noticed, at the same moment he said, “What’s that?” and I knew exactly what he was referring to more »

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Why do we do it? Why do we find ourselves perpetually crossing county and state lines, early in the a.m., hungry, dazed, half-drunk, half-asleep, and whole-alone? more »

At night he would lie with his head in her lap, tonguing the newly formed skin, learning its salty smoothness. He liked that these new, shiny patches had yet to suffer the abuse of daily living. more »

I stretched out on the carpeted floor and allowed my co-workers to move around me, stroke me, to flip me over, and over again. more »

…this couch is not the kind you’d want to fall asleep on. it looks like a giant band-aid, curing something self-inflincted. max and i know, without knowing, each other.  he is a bruise; a few shades darker than me and geometrically… more »

Tawny is a girl and a girl is a flower. A girl is a rhythm. A girl is a train riding tracks. more »

All the voices coming from the holes in the ground were talking to themselves, sometimes shushing themselves, too. They were hiding from the Bully, the one that got Popcorn. more »

I’m in the car with my childhood sweetheart. We’re lost on hometown streets, houses lined up like headstones. more »

She makes a dismissive flick with her hand toward the tunnel. I go. I want to communicate with chemicals, understand attraction and terror as smells. There is no algorithm here, no easy pattern of pheromones to follow. more »

We exfoliated frantically in a vain attempt to eliminate every shred of skin we'd worn before you left. This was Snake's idea. He left hollow, papery shells of himself draped down the stairs like forgotten streamers. I exhausted three loofahs. more »

I earned an A in physics. Did the tiger attack you or did you attack the tiger? It wasn’t me, Officer. He wore cutoffs on the first date. I married him anyway. more »

My mother’s made of plastic. All her parts. In her, one stores solids, fluids, leftovers, even garbage. more »

That night around the fire, after she’d coughed up more water than he thought could fit in a person’s lungs, Manuelo sat and listened to her talk about a white tunnel of light and her life flashing before her eyes—clichés, yes, she said, but true. more »

The room is small in its warmth. I feel swollen in the dim glow of a low fire and a sputtering candle. I am alone, save for my son. more »

"Give me my blowgun," Harry said. Kyle handed him the blowgun from the floor on his side. It was dark and cool and we were on a county road sixty miles east of Dallas. The sky was autumn clear; a quarter moon hung low on the horizon. more »

Meteors are drifting down through alien skies. My eyes wander up from the curbside, over the hair and heads of my friends. more »

The third reader on my thesis committee is an albino crocodile. With his white skin and liquid red eyes, Dr. Croc, Ph.D. would make a nice pair of boots or a stylish suitcase for a rich, fat Texan. more »

If you wanna see how ugly rich people really be, then go ahead, baby. If you wanna deal with drug-addicted movie stars and suits, divas and teenagers tryin' to front some Gatsby shit, then go ahead, baby. I ain't gonna stop you, but they is, and when they do, change gonna come. more »

They’ll wander the streets with rusted saws, desperate for volunteers to be divided and, after applause, made whole again. But all belief in magic will suddenly cease along with the necessity for three square meals and conversations about the moon. more »