I don’t keep anything in my pockets. That was the first thing I noticed, gosh, back when I still had to move my car. My chapstick and pens sit on the desk and my car stays put except for weekly street sweeping (though I don’t hear them come by so don’t think I even need… Continue reading a loner in isolation
Tag: love
Pillow Talk
You cannot escape truth when talking across a pillow. Delirious comfort leaves no space for fear. If there was a banking system for time, an exchange rate for moments, for getting back what we've lost, I would invest all these empty hours I bleed out introspectively on the page for one morning spent volleying whispered… Continue reading Pillow Talk
Road Verse
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… Continue reading Road Verse
Talking in My REM Sleep
In another life and with another brain I would have made myself pupil and master of language. Instead: I tiptoe on the precipices of residual memories that spill out from suppressed synapses. I desire nothing but the nine-minute intervals between hushing the waking bells I've fooled my mind the night before into believing will penetrate… Continue reading Talking in My REM Sleep
Surviving Suicide: What I’ve Learned After 10 Years
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… Continue reading Surviving Suicide: What I’ve Learned After 10 Years
Father’s Day, 2018
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… Continue reading Father’s Day, 2018
Forgiveness
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… Continue reading Forgiveness
Planes of You
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… Continue reading Planes of You
Pink Bow Untied
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… Continue reading Pink Bow Untied
Top Score
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… Continue reading Top Score
Burning the Tracks
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… Continue reading Burning the Tracks
The Sieve Bored Holier
"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… Continue reading The Sieve Bored Holier
Bad Business
Habit had me walking home along the trolley rails late at night when no one else was on the road. A girl with a bag hanging on her hip was coming down the hill next to my building. She saw me stepping off the rails and onto the sidewalk. She passed my door as I… Continue reading Bad Business
Conviction
I fell in love with a girl named Conviction. We are inseparable. When I walk, I walk with Conviction. When I speak, I speak with Conviction. Before her I was faithless, with her I believe.
Eight Last Minutes of Light
The hours behind the sun stretch out to the curve of the universe then turn an inverted trek unto the shadowed earth, the space heater long gone out. Time cannot be heard in outer space. Its needle tip flashes to prick the fringe of fabric the patchwork quilt a chair-bound scientist wove with threads on… Continue reading Eight Last Minutes of Light
Sophisticating the Rudimentary 