He wasnât afraid to crack a grin, in the most colorful sweater, a bejeweled crown atop his head, raising a glass of his favorite cocktail to let the world know he is still kicking it, even in deathâs hallows.
I breathed in the piss scent of the alleyway through the black knit. Then my face emerged from beyond the shirt, and I stood facing the dead end of the alley holding my breasts with one forearm.
She rode her pony here and he stinks like old socksâthereâs no bond better than between a woman and her pony. I note she wears striped leotards right up to her loincloth.
At two in the afternoon, she hears a bang like a gunshot. Eugenia peeks out her bedroom window. Whatâs visible to her: the Tangsâ barbecue pit, their garden shed, their kidney-shaped pool. She counts dead oval leaves trapped on the water. Must be the Tang brothers lighting firecrackers behind the shed again, she thinks. Theyâre always plotting to give the birds a heart attack. Forefingers stuffed in her ears, she wonders why the brothers arenât studying, and from where do they get their sadistic toys? But if the Gohs across the street managed to smuggle in flamingos to chain to
Iâm in class reading Hamlet and contemplating suicide on a cliffside. Reciting poetic verses about family curses and hiding behind a curtain with a knife. My phone buzzes, and I lean forward to read something out of a Shakespearean tragedy. She killed someone. The words glow like the flame of a lit match and I spring from my desk chair, repelled by their heat. Faces swivel toward me, judgement radiating from their eyes. Iâm an injured animal at the center of a swarm about to be mauled by my own pack. My heartbeat radiates in my ears: glove to a
She woke up in a classroom. Chalkboard at her head, corkboard at her feet. As she adjusted to the dusk lightâwas it 5 a.m. or 5 p.m.?âshe discovered she wasnât in the setting of a recurring dream sheâd been having. The âI fell asleep at the desk and missed the most important test of a lifetimeâ dream. No, she was in a hotel room. The Eaton. The card pinned to the corkboard wall held her personalized key to the rooftop gym. As she pressed her body against the hotel room window, the humidity moved through the glass and brushed up
We were going to scrape that possum off the road because somebody had to do it. Thatâs what our Dads said, trucks rattling in neighboring driveways, complaining about the borough workers, asking nobody in particular where their taxes went, if not to cleaning up a dead possum right in the middle of the intersection. The Biology teacher had even joked about dissecting it for class, because it was the intersection right next to the high school and so every student and every teacher saw it, curled up and still in the mornings then somehow more freshly dead in the afternoons.
Passion turned thirteen in the middle of July, and when the first light of this day, this special day, woke her and sweetened the darkness like milk stirred into coffee, Passion divided like a cell, turned into two Passions, a watching Passion, a watched Passion. Passion sensed Passion, keenly and with great interest. Herself. Her self. Passion thought, Here curls Passion on her side, under a worn sheet, her gaze turned to the paling window. The curve of her hip is slight. The arm hugging the pillow is slim. And there rises the sun. Pay attention, Passion, Passion ordered. Smell
She lay huddled and naked in bed, her skin a grayish black. Her brittle hair broke off at the slightest touch. I rested my head on her rigid body, hearing nothing. I inhaledâa dull, mossy smell. I called Dad. He came over right away. He tapped Mom a few times, then knocked on her like he was knocking on a door. He placed his ear against her open lips. âGet me a flashlight.â I brought him one. He shined light into her mouth. âWhat do you see?â He grabbed a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket. He
She isnât the most beautiful woman I have ever seen but I havenât seen a woman in eight months or more and am turning, quickly, to dust. By havenât seen a woman I mean havenât seen Leanne, though either way itâs hot sand, glass and friction. Itâs a wonder my cabin doesnât go up in flames, everything made of wood as it is, working on myself at night as I do. It would only take one spark. She is sitting out on a small mound of grass that I think of as the stoop, her back turned to me. It