When the second chance is really the fourth or fifth And you aren’t ashamed, but you won’t admit Lessons are learned as you go, They don’t wait at the end of the road. When you’ve lost the faith you thought was heaven-sent Don’t make it all about trying to reinvent The soul you traded in … More Road Verse
In another life and with another brain I would have made myself master and pupil of language – instead… I tiptoe on the precipices of residual memories that spill out from suppressed synapses. In the nine-minute intervals between hushing the waking bells I’ve fooled my mind the night before into believing will penetrate the film … More Otherwise Known as REM Sleep
10 years ago, I attempted suicide. On a summer night in 2008, my parents drove me from the house where I was raised to the emergency room in an effort to save the life of their 21-year-old son. My action was built on several years of mental turmoil and anguish, of unchecked thoughts and words … More Surviving Suicide: What I’ve Learned After 10 Years
My father is wise. His wisdom has helped more people than I could ever count. When I was young, I was envious of the so many to whom he lent his ears, of the wisdom he dispensed as if it came naturally. However, when his learning was dispensed to me—it was with frequency as is … More Father’s Day, 2018
You’ll reach a point where you cannot blame your mistakes on your parents’. In the early years of your second decade, you’d determined they were the reason you wore a hero’s mask over your villain face and fought for both sides. A double life, your father called it. When you were alone you spat at … More Forgiveness.
Most of us do not remember the first time we learned our shapes. Until you budded into my life, I thought that I knew all the circles, squares, and rectangles – the rigidly defined personalities, those with a set number of sides, those who are predictable, parallel, familiar. I look back on the cast of … More Planes of You
Rain would have been more fitting. Clouds. Torrential downpours. Some freak hurricane. Not this nurturing warmth that was carried in the breeze along with the songs of springtime robins. The boys were out with their father picking up new fishing poles and getting something for lunch. Patrick felt it best that Isabella, his wife, the … More Pink Bow Untied
Whenever I would get to see you, when it was our time, I felt I was stepping up to the challenge of an arcade pinball machine. Feeling below the cabinet for that hidden power switch, I’d seek you out. Reaching into my coat pocket for my busted burner phone and punching in the sequence of … More Top Score
A red glow washed over the amorphous designs on the table. Thin, bent tubes housing neon bordered the metallic siding. She sat in the hollow space carved out by the fish tank wall wrapping behind their customary booth. He hadn’t answered her question, the question she had asked him her to pose. She knew he … More Burning the Tracks
“I am the place in which something has occurred.” — Claude Lévi–Strauss What is here labelled as “something,” must be aggrandized. “Something” is too broad a descriptor. So, is it more direct to say I am the place in which many a thing has happened? Is this a better means of explaining in a single … More The Sieve Bored Holier
