My friend Gina force-feeds me crackers while I’m in hysterics, riding the climax of a bad mushroom trip.
A corseted Victorian woman in puffy, pink silk beamed up at a starched-collared lord astride a stallion that pulled at the hobbled stable boy gripping its reigns.
It’s a grey day. I’m lazing around on the couch playing an inane game on my phone.
I waved, said “Sorry,” smiled out the window, and that’s when I noticed the words he was screaming.
I wake up early. Stomach churns. Panic. A gust of terror that has no language to support it.
Across the room, the most gorgeous and popular boy in school — tall, blonde, athletic and artsy. A damn Norse god come to life.
I always had to try something once. Just to see.
When I pick up the phone, she’s sobbing. CW // suicidal ideation
We huddled together, silent, as we tiptoed past tombstones and stumbled over crumbling stone walls, the moon our lone guiding light.
I saw him sitting in the front pew of All Saints Church. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Burlap-like irregularities are scattered across my face, foreign invaders in a war they are destined to win, for time is their leader.
I tell him to chase me and ask for a ten-second running start, a real one with “hippopotamus” between the numbers.
“Jill! Come over here!” My heart went dizzy, for I was never invited by my sister to come over here, or anywhere.
It’s a quarter to midnight. I’m going to change my pronouns on Instagram.
The lilacs on the best corner of the block touched us as we took our walks, their blooms too plump, persuasive.
the opening note, a crisp major chord before the black and white keys give away beneath the flurry of my fingertips.
“Sheila,” she said, looking worried. “Are you feeling ok?”
While walking along the beachfront in Swampscott, Massachusetts, I spotted a guy coming toward me. He was singing “Under the Boardwalk” by the Drifters, half in Spanish, half in English.
The first bite I inhale, the second I gobble, the third I gulp past a hiccup. She frowns, but she's holding her breath too, swallowing the morsel stuck in her own throat.
The smoke grew like a tree, unfurling its thin curls in the unquiet night. It smelled like blueberry syrup, thick and cloying.