So Sweet, So Tender

I have a slight obsession with the concept of poets (usually male,) reading poems about their girlfriends, significant others, or wives to audiences in which their girlfriends, significant others, or wives are a part of. So many times we imagine a female poet being the one who writes about her personal life and the romantic, personal persons in it (guilty as charged), but there's something so sweet and incredibly tender and endearing about how when a man reads a poem about his girlfriend/S.O/wife, he never looks at her, never acknowledges her, never puts her on the spot, and yet, you can see the understanding pass silently between the two.

These two poems come from two different poetry readings I sat in on. The first one comes from a reading given by Galway Kinnell at the Burlington Book Festival, and the second was a reading by one of my professors at Champlain College, Warren Baker. Both were poems about their wives when they were younger, and I'll admit to watching their wives like hawks after I realized who the poems being read were about. Like seasoned poker players, neither woman had any sort of tell that they felt any sort of way about it.

I think I would dance on my seat.

The Pulitzer and His Prize

She sits like any other member of the audience,

Periodically fidgeting to get more comfortable in the folding theater seat,

As his voice slides over her,

Touching everyone else as well,

And she shares him equally.

Unlike other audience members,

She never looks at her watch.

Later,

As they walk through the dark,

Arm-in-arm,

She leans into him and sighs.

"I've always loved

When you read the one

About me."

Literary Couples

She sits,

Front row,

As he reads

Aloud

About watching her sleep.

So intimate,

So sweet;

What it's like

For all these strangers

To hear how he feels about her,

I always wonder about.

She sits,

Front row,

Silently,

Not moving,

And I can't help but wonder,

With longing

If I will ever sit,

Front row,

Silently,

Maybe moving,

But just a little bit,

And listen to a man

Speak about what it's like

To watch me sleep.

XOXO

(The Only Thing To) Fear Is (Fear Itself)

Fear is

A thief in the night,

A phone ringing at 2 AM,

A hushed voice from the other room.

Fear is

Seeing your on-again, off-again boyfriend's car

Parked in front of his on-again, off-again other woman's house

And having to think of them, twisted together, for over a year now.

Fear is

Watching your aging father

Do the old-man shuffle of caution,

Prematurely.

Fear is

Hearing the blue-collar voices of men

Below your window in the chill of an October morning,

And wondering if they're turning off your heat.

Fear is

Lying awake at night

Thinking about the heat, your father, and the other woman

And finding you can still sleep.

XOXO

The Morning After

Your underwear

Are always the first thing to go missing,

Hiding under the bed,

Or tossed into some far corner.

He usually will get up first,

To make coffee, or go to the bathroom,

That is, if you aren't ashamed enough

To have snuck out during the early dawn light

First.

You will have roughly 15 minutes

To regain some semblance of the well-pressed self-control

You had the night before,

Sans brush, and sans mirror.

His roommates will be moving noisily around,

With no clue or no care

That you might still be there.

They talk about eggs as you try to find all your rings,

Loose, like how you're feeling about your morals.

You hold your forehead,

Sneaking glances at him in Ray Bans and a Sox hat,

From in between your fingers

As he drives you home.

You wonder if he'll call again.

XOXO

Come Full-Circle

The first night, you made the White Russians with too much vodka. I drank it anyway, and didn't tell you until later, when I was already too drunk to drive home. Thank god you asked me to stay.

The last night, you made me a White Russian, with knock-off Kahlua, and again, too much vodka. I drank it in a rush non-conducive to walking home all the way across town, and was glad when you called me back.

The first night, we slept naked. It was winter-time and cold-- you pressed up against me. I didn't mind too much, other than the Band-Aid-adhesive feeling of peeling my skin off of your thighs when I went to roll over, where your hairs clung to me with sweat.

The last night, we slept naked. One of the last nights of summer, far too hot to touch, I looked at your alien body as it glowed translucently in the dark beside me, all legs and dark patches of hair, and thought about how weird you looked; how weird it was to be looking at you naked, vulnerable, and with your mouth open, snoring.

It was his birthday. We were both drunk beyond judgement. And Lord knows the soft-spot a mile wide for each other is located between both of our legs. It seemed like The Right Thing To Do. A tip of the hat to a shared history and the fact that human beings are remarkably fallible and Have Needs. An old song and dance, revisited. A waltz nearly a year archaic.

The next morning, I woke up, oddly elated to realize that other than a headache that pounded from the bridge of my nose between my eyes (a bull's eye to point where thinking had NOT gone on), I didn't feel any different.

Strange when you've already cared so much that you can't possibly care any more, every last drop of feeling wrung out of you like a sponge in an emotional vice-grip. Not enough emotional range left in you to switch your settings. Oxytocin orgasms over. Spent.

XOXO

Fall Slides In

Our floors creak in the weather changes,

Like the bones of an old, protesting woman

Who has seen too much

And lived enough

To have filled up every page of her diaries,

And sigh at the first sign of fall.

XOXO

Disappointment Comes With the Territory

If I were to ask you which hand I smoke with,

Left or Right,
I have a feeling that we would both be disappointed.
You,

For getting it wrong,
And me,

For realizing you don’t know me

As much as I wish you did.

XOXO

In Absentia

It's one of those mornings where it feel like marionette strings are pulling me awake and out of bed.

Girl like painted doll-- pale skin, blue eyes lined in black, pink lips. A blink and a small pick at a zit and the illusion is shattered in the mirror, a thousand fragments of life and reality falling to bounce on the tile floor.

I cough and my body clenches and unclenches, throat screaming in pain, wet globs on the sidewalk making a path to where I have been and where I am going like Gretel with tuberculosis. As I sit in class, the ghost of questing fingers creep along the inseam of my jeans, and my skin crawls, bile rising and threatening to revolt. The dust in the street whips through the air and against my cheek, and it feels and tastes and smells completely foreign to me.

Craning my head around to see his face, I realize I am looking for a dead man everywhere, but looking never brought anyone back to life.

I look at the invitation. I consider, carefully, both sides of the response. The weight of a “yes”, the finality of a “no”. Wonder about propositions. Wonder about lies. Wonder about what “having coffee” really means. I have been reading long enough to become excellent at reading in between the lines. Wonder where “coffee” ends and “something more” starts. Wonder where and when the time for explanations is. Wonder about how much sway resemblance has. Wonder if flattery will help. Wonder if I really am that sort of girl. I make my choice. Wait five minutes. Find myself back again, looking at those words. Reconsidering. I leave again. Come back. Decide on one thing at the moment—I desperately, desperately need someone to listen. I realize even as I navigate away that I will accept. Not now, but sometime soon. Sometime soon, I will be back, still needing an ear, a shoulder, some reassurance, a sounding board. Actors have stand-ins; why can’t we have stand-ins for life when the leads come down with something? Isn’t that what’s already in practice? Leading lady; leading man; understudy; stage manager like magician. I feel the tug on the invisible marionette strings again, dragging me across the stage. The audience claps. A brilliant performance. Red and white flowers sent. Red lights flash like strobes. Roxanne without Sting to validate her. No red dress, not tonight. You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right.

The first sob startles me. There's momentary wonder and glances around to see if the sound really came from me. The next thing I know, I am pounding the sides of my fists against the cold tiles of the shower's stall, the weak trickle from the showerhead flowing down my back as I plead with whoever will listen to me through the tears that fall, unnoticed, down the drain with the rest of the water. "Please, please, don't let me shut down again. I don't want to. I don't want to!" The voice is uncanny, desperate, someone speaking from inside of me whom I didn't know existed. She sounds small, scared, exhausted. She sounds like she has something to live for, but no idea how to fight for it.

I have always held that crying in the shower doesn't count. Then again, I've always held that crying is something that shouldn't be done at all.

I listen, even though I have absolutely no answers. If I could do something for you, believe me—I would. If I could afford to lay down enough for both your life and mine, I would. If I could be the kind of girl who runs hot and cold like you do, I would. And if I could somehow reassure you that actually not being afraid to pick one or the other and run a steady temperature won’t end your life or wreck your unknown future, I WOULD, if I had the slightest idea how to go about fixing you.

Broken people don't know how to fix each other any better than a shoemaker can fix a broken camera's lens. It's all about perspective, and if you aren't willing to see it from mine, then there is absolutely nothing I can do for you, no matter how badly you want someone else to do all the work and excavating of your buried skeletons for you. Scars and substances and smoke and mirrors aside, trying to play with your shards like a puzzle yields absolutely nothing but bloody fingers and a bad taste in my mouth-- Colgate and Camel Lights.

Walking away and waiting are pretty much the same thing. Both are about an expanse of time as tangible as miles and walls that need to be hurdled. A phone that doesn't ring is still a phone. It's not like a tree falling in the forest-- it still doesn't make any sound. Effort expended is a life-lesson in physics-- what you give is what you get, and I'm tired enough to not get out of bed anymore on my own accord. The Peroni on the nightstand and the ashtray on the balcony keep track of the fact that I am still alive. The shape under my sheets suggests I am not.

The alarm buzzes constantly. No matter how many times I paw at it, it doesn't stop keeping track of time slipping by. The numbers on the display mean nothing anymore. 7 at night and sleep. 4 AM and awake. 2 and full sunlight and waking up for the first time.

You need like a newborn child; like a ravenous baby; like Romulus and Remus searching for the she-wolf to suckle them, mortal women no good. The mirror doesn't lie well enough to me; the constant checking reaffirms it; the pain and the weakness cinch the deal. Mortal, mortal, mortal. It rings through me like a death knell. There is absolutely nothing I can do for you, if you are not willing to do anything in return.

“In absentia” is more than a role-call response.

XOXO

Better Than Pleather.

"Spinning in circles, halfway down our road to Nowhere, I smoked a bowl in shiny moonlight, bright as a newly-minted nickel, while thick snowflakes fell on me, making temporary homes on my hat and hair and shoulders until they dissolved into me, like reverse tears. If you haven't had this same experience, I highly recommend it to you.

I run my headphone wires through my hands, again, and again, and again. Literally, I am weaving sound between my fingers. I get stoner's cramps doing this; those aches you feel and can't be sure if they're real or not. In exchange, I am fertile ground for words; sentences; commas; the loving ampersand.

It's intense how people nest. Nearly ridiculous when you think about it. We collect and collect and collect to decorate what is only fleeting and temporary. For what? Comfort? Purely sensory. Even in my most aesthetically-pleasing, controlled environment, without internal peace of mind, none of it matters.

We build our emotional houses shoddily, and then wonder why drafts chill us to the core during the first signs of harsh winds.

Weather. Withstand. Dig down. Find what is missing within, and then release that beast in all of its' unrighteous and fully mortal petty glory. There is no shame in admitting loss and want, other than the shame we put on those emotions ourselves. There is no more human feeling than want; when you embrace it, it no longer hinders-- it becomes a building-block of character, if answered.

A conversation on wants will always be harder then it seems when talking to just yourself. Buck up. Practice saying "I want..." to your own shocked face in the mirror.

Blessed are those who want openly, for they are the ones who stand to inherit. No silent need was ever filled, unless you have psychic friends, that is. And if you do-- don't talk to me about it. Some of us are trying to evolve, here. We're throwing things up here with reckless abandon. It's like a shout in a dark tunnel-- Hello, can you read me?

And how can something that feels good be bad? Makes utterly no sense. Control is the issue. Everything is fine until it looses itself from the leash of Control. Keep it tight to you, like a dog, straining and baying at the cat, and you're good, if not utterly satisfied, save the noise. Life has an expiration date. Might as well make it as interesting as you can before it curdles."

Full Disclosure: Though I was never a S.W.E.D, there was a period (read: solid year+) in my life where I smoked heavily. Tweaker Tuesdays and Weed Wednesdays were celebrated like Naked Tuesdays were this past summer. Anyway, long story short, I quit, cold-turkey, in May. Nearly eight months, and then, another long story short, moving, the stress of finals finally (hahaha, bad puns,) being over, and the daily, unrelenting grind of moving back home for break+month made me take a running swan-dive off of the wagon like an Olympian who could taste the gold. (I could have just said "Michael Phelps" and got the gist in there through popular culture and innuendo. Damn. Almost too easy.)

It was borderline disgusting how easily it all came back. The first time, much to my dismay, there wasn't much of an affect. Last night, however, I took it straight to the face, like a noob. Like someone who had waited eight months; eagerly, anticipating, foaming at the mouth with want. As I suppose with any alcoholic, you don't know how much you've missed and wanted it until you have it again. And then-- lord. Lord, lord, lord. I don't know if you've ever denied yourself anything for solid months. (If you have, tell me about it. I'd love to know about your experience.) But for me, it was like the culmination of all the best times before, all rolled into one bowl, with all of the philosophy and feeling, and none of the paranoia or freak-outs. It was nirvana. It was purely sensory and totally existential, all at once.

One of the things that always remains the same is that when I'm in that state is that I always am up for writing and philosophizing. During my heyday, I engaged in one of the most philosophical conversations I've ever had. It was, I shit you not, about pleather. I don't remember specifics. I just remember sitting in a friends' living room and arguing-- passionately, defending my points, making clear and concise reasoning-- about pleather. PLEATHER. Imagine what I can do with solid material.

Last night, after engaging in one of the coolest experiences of my young life (immortalized above), I put myself down to bed with a rented copy of the movie "Into The Wild." Stunning. Awe- and thought-provoking. I absolutely require the book to further my generally happy existence. Knowing myself well, I had a journal and pen handy. Sure enough, I had to move it from the nightstand to beside me in bed because I kept having to pause the movie and reach over for it, time after time, after time. Blatant laziness, made worse by the night's activities, demanded as little movement as possible to keep the creative juices flowing. And so, I give you these small and relatively insignificant tidbits, though still worthy enough to provoke enough thought in me to make me feel they're worthy of post-age. Enjoy. And may you find equally liberating release.

XOXO

Snapshots.

The User and the Used

"I’m glassy-eyed in the mirror; that same vacant, pretty, coping stare Legs used to have.

My mind stutters on these thoughts, catching rays of sunlight and dust particles glinting in the air. My fingers cramp and release, heavy like my eyelids as I type on the black and white, trying to get the words down, depressing ‘backspace’ more and more as I realize letters are missing…
Overhead, planes fly people to their heart’s location.

My heart thumps heavily in the cage of my chest, bone and skin. The air is thick and smells like funk. I puff, puff, drag, feet resting on my windowsill, blowing the smoke out the window with the aid of a fan. My lighter sparks and catches, sparks and catches, and I wonder if this was how Legs did it, if that’s how he found his escape, like I am doing now. I buy, and de-seed and stem, and pack, and roll, and light, and inhale, and let the smoke trickle from my open lips like smoke monsters in the dark air, and I miss him, terribly, heart-wrenchingly, despondently, all at once.

It’s late, and I know I should put the laptop down, stop allowing myself free access into the confused sore that is my heart and laying it, splat, across the page, but it’s a masochistic exercise in life-lessons: you fall in love and let that person walk out of your life, and this is what happens. So you cry about it. You rationalize it. You get angry about it. You work at it. You smoke to avoid it at first, and then you smoke to embrace it. You mold it into something you can work with. You apply it. You find something that you can live with. You get happy about this, at least, and then you smoke more to continue. It’s a circle of use, misuse, and being used.

...The words tumble from fingertips that are dry and unfeeling on the keyboard, and I don’t even try to stop them. I can’t even stop my mind. Blink, there’s another memory I haven’t remembered since it happened. Flash, and I’m sweaty and I have a dry mouth and can feel everything around me in minute detail. Click, and I’m all the way gone on the sweet side effects of a love that doesn’t know better and a habit that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow. Snap, I’m back to square one."

(In)Pulse
Roused from my sleep,
I clutch pen
& grit teeth.
I cannot help when the words come
Anymore than you can help your addictions,
Already deep-seeded,
Or the singer can control her song
Or the bird his flight.
It is an impulse,
My scratch of pen on paper,
The snort of powder up your nose,
Much
Harsher
&
Methodical
As you cut lines,


Prepare your straw, ---Close one nostril, ---And make that
---------strange ---------snuffling ---------noise


That makes me cringe,
Though my back is turned to you,
Like it always is when I see you start your ritual.
The rise and fall of notes, much sweeter than this candy.
The feeling of air under a bird’s wing, much more free.
You are not sweet,
& you are not free.
But neither am I, chasing this trail of papers,
Always hoping the next one will be better.
You and I,
We aren’t so much un-alike,
Both of us with our willingness to fall prey,
To the things that gnaw on the insides of us.
It is to say,
“Because I can,”
& to do so.
It is to say,
“Who I am,”
& not resist it.

I tell you to stop using.
You tell me to shut the light off,
& go to bed.

Cold

"I’m warmest in sunlight. Not at night when you’re lying next to me, radiating body heat and safety and comfort, but when I’m walking in the cold air and the sunlight touches my face with rays gentler than your gentlest brush of fingertips. I think I have a gold-and-cream complexion (my nice way of saying what some call “pale” in tones reminiscent of disease and social awkwardness,) because I’m a sun-baby—my hair reflects it and my skin soaks it in, becoming almost luminescent. (Again with the “pale.”) I was born in June for a reason.

Your heat doesn’t stay long, just like your body—come the next morning, we part to go our separate ways and I’m cold until the next time you nuzzle your body beside mine, nook into nook, limb over limb, some strange sort of human pick-up-stick pile of us. The sun only leaves me at night, leaving me in your care, your heat, your warmth, knowing that you can never really replace it, even though you will try, and you will like to think that you’re the true center of my personal universe. But I say everything still revolves around one sun, and you, with your thin wrists and your love for sarcasm, are far too human. You are human, and you are cold.

Winter wind still blows even though the sun is in full shine mode. I tilt my face up at it through the smudged windows of the bus and close my eyes, seeing a disco ball pattern on the insides of my eyelids that dance like the free-love generation did on LSD. I’ve forgotten my coat at home, lulled by the sunshine into thinking that it’s warmer than it actually is, and you offer me yours.

The ancient Greeks’ sun-god was named Helios. The Romans called him Apollo. I call him warmth-bringer, light-maker, shadow-chaser. You call me sun-worshipper, heat-seeker, desert-baby. I call you mine, but I lie through my teeth when I say it. You are not mine, and I am not yours, not any more than I can claim to own the sun.

In the age of solar panels, people harness sunlight and bend it to suit their needs—heat, energy, power. I am just as much to blame, yoking you to my proverbial harness to suit my basic needs—companionship, entertainment, and because it’s convenient. You, I suspect, have done the same to me. We do it because it’s easy; because it’s what people expect of us. When you need, you need. It’s human to need, too human, and I have never been good at denying myself, the byproduct of a spoiled childhood. Although I have a hard time telling people out-loud what it is we’re playing at, I find it equally hard to be utterly blasé about it and say, “I keep him around for the sex.” What I don’t have a hard time telling them is what it isn’t. It isn’t forever. It isn’t immortal. It isn’t stationary, or reliable, or even planned. Just like the sun rises from the East every morning, it is predictable and we take it for granted. Once, you called me a frigid bitch. I didn’t deny it. I, just like you, am cold. That’s why I believe more in sunlight than I do in love."

Christmas, Tough-Love Style

"What do you think? Does it look good?"

"It could do without some of the more tacky ones."

"Like which?"

"Like that one, to the left of the middle. The lumpy red and green one that looks like a wreath."

"That is a wreath. I made it for you in Advent Workshop years ago."

"Oh. What about that white Styrofoam one?"

"That one, too. It's supposed to be a snowflake."

"The clothespin reindeer."

"Basically, anything you consider tacky, I made for you and Mom as a child."

Wounding people is so easy, we stride right on afterwards without even a second thought. We all do it.

There will always be that awkward tension between parent and child in the constant search for parental approval. Tides change-- though I will never feel quite up-to-snuff for my father, my mother now looks to me for my approval. I am off-guard and awkward, and don't know when and how to give it. This softens the dynamic of my father a bit, however.

But, then again, who am I to judge?

Choosing Sides

"Wall or nightstand side?" he always asks, even though the answer always remains the same. It's just the kind of guy he is.

He's already tucked in next to the nightstand. Half of me wonders what would happen if I asked for that side. Half of me chastises the other half for trying to make trouble when everything is exactly how I want it to be in the first place. Half of me sighs. All of me crawls up the bed instead.

"Wall," I answer. "Of course. That's where I always end up, anyway." Always between cool wall and warm body. I modulate temperature like a flesh thermostat. Always on his right-hand side. Just like how he always pushes me back down in his sleep to his arm and shoulder in the place of a pillow.

Whoever needed cotton and filling when you have a hot-blooded male, anyway?

After the third night, I wised up. If Manhammoud won't let you go to the pillow-mountain, you bring the pillow to you.

Drip-Drop

Part One:

Writers: Black depressions, over-active imaginations, mental illnesses, and substance abuse. We are an under-whelmingly cheery lot.

Bathtub and beer. Bathtub and half-bottle of wine. Bathtub and a vodka concoction. It's all the same to me.

I think writers have an affinity for bathtubs because there's always the possibility of drowning oneself if the mood so strikes you. I'm sure some author must have tried holding their breath a minute too long after an unfavorable review. (Note to Self: Research this.)

I lounge in the convex shallows of the tub, one knee propped up under the facet, regulating water temperature by feel, my right kneecap bright red because I like it scalding hot. (Might as well live if you're going to be alive.) I'm reading Abbey's "The Fool's Progress" and feeling quite foolish myself, feeding this writer's malaise of mine so indulgently. Later, I will try sticking my toes in the jets, reverse whack-a-mole.

Part Two:

I turn the radio on, but leave the lights off. The moment I step into the shower and close the door behind me, my hair instantly and decidedly curls up in the trapped humidity. (Fact: I have naturally wavy hair. You will probably never see it.) The Presidents of the United States of America remind me in "Peaches" (Fact: Meant to give that CD back...) that the acoustics of the shower are the best I've ever found for singing (Fact,) but these glass walls won't hear my voice today. Soap in silence. Shampoo in solitude. Condition in consternation. (Fact: Alliteration is one of my many writer's vices. Along with verbosity and cliches.)

"Must stop playing hermit," I tell myself. "That's a direct order. Cheer the fuck up."

Circa Bankruptcy

Christmas night. The dog is napping in the backseat, taking up the entire bench, and it's nearly midnight; not Christmas any more. I'm driving and smoking at the same time, because that's one of the things I do know how to do in full multi-tasking glory. I've got the windows cracked because, silly to admit, I am scared of harming an innocent animal's lungs. Mine are already damned. So my nose is cold so his lungs can remain free from any more second-hand smoke. Silly. But the windows are still down.

It's nearly dead downtown. I'm tempted to make a silent joke about the graveyard shift, but it would be almost too easy. I don't know what called me here, but I needed to fill my eyes with it. The sight of a sheriff's cruiser lingering at a red light reminds me I still haven't replaced a front headlight that's out. I skulk past and hope Christmas spirit is enough to get me out of a ticket. I don't have the time, money, or desire to pay for either a new bulb or a ticket. I'd rather just take Plan A and flee the country. Har har.

The streetlights that rise up around me are festooned in white Christmas lights that wind around them and wreaths. The old, retro buildings, once freshly painted and proud, slouch into their foundations. Half of the storefronts are empty; "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs are the only things that occupy windows. The city of my childhood is gone. Instead, hardscrabble has taken hold.

At seven, I used to walk the four blocks down the hill from the public library to my dad's shop. At twenty, I lock my car doors as I come to a stop outside the building that used to be my father's. No lights. No gold glistening from overhead lighting in the display cases in the windows. Everything is quiet; not even the whisper of falling snow to make white-noise. I'm caught half-in and half-out of the past and the present, the crossroads of What Used To Be and The Cold, Hard Truth. Somewhere in the last twelve years, I missed this all changing. You come home, an almost-adult, and you suddenly see it all. It's alarming. It makes you wonder where it went wrong; if there was something you could do; what signs you missed and how. And if a city can change like this, unnoticed until it's over, what else can?

The dog lets out a snore. Suddenly tired, I take a last long draw and then stub my cigarette out on my side-view mirror, the plastic burned and crusted from doing it so many times in the same place before. I pull a U-ey and head for home as the clock ticks in a new day.

"And miles to go, before I sleep, and miles to go, before I sleep," I remember as I roll up the windows and rub the feeling back into my nose.

Implosion

"I'm done with being looked through. When you look at me, it's almost enough to make me believe I could catch fire. Spontaneously combust in being someone."

---

Excuse me for just thrusting you into that, but one of my professors, a very wise man who is pretty much the reason I came to Champlain, once said that there is a time and a place for disclaimers, and in front of your writing is neither the time, nor the place. So I guessed I was wise to heed him-- his advice hasn't done me wrong yet.

The one good thing about being home and broke is that it's giving me lots of time to write. And write. And write some more. The above are some pieces of writing I've been busy resurrecting and breathing new life and words into for awhile (the first piece was an excerpt from a longer work from Creative Non-Fiction; (In)Pulse and Cold are both pieces I read recently at a gathering that went over well, and since people asked for copies, decided to put them here so I don't have to individually email. Laziness is a vice I posses.), as well as some short snippets that have come to me recently, as always, in the most awkward of places. (Mostly, the shower. In the shower, hands sudsy, not a pen or piece of dry paper in sight, is where I get all my best ideas. I have learned to play them on repeat like a broken cassette tape between my brain and my lips to remember them until I get out and run, dripping, for a flat surface and something to write with.) Muses be damned. They always come at the worst times.

XOXO