Kira K. Homsher is a writer from Philadelphia, currently living in Los Angeles. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online, Indiana Review, Passages North, Hobart, and others. You can find her at kirahomsher.com and tweeting @bogcritter.
Transfixed by the odd turns and cadence of its speech, each day I set a timer and kept writing until the alarm went off. This approach no doubt held its roots in my background recording music: I thought of these writing sessions like performances, called “takes.”
It’s an involuntary reflex, like how looking at the sun can make some people sneeze. Whenever Harding drives past a 7-Eleven, he has to turn around and buy a pack of cigarettes. To be clear, he is not a smoker. He buys a cheap pack of whatever color looks most appealing in the moment, regardless of brand, then smokes exactly one cigarette in the parking lot before stuffing the pack in the glove compartment and driving to his destination. He particularly likes packs in yellow. And sea-foam green, because they look clean and soapy. If he had to explain it,…