I have always been a kid attracted to gaps, running my tongue through missing teeth, seeing what would fit in my belly button.
… could I at least get a tubal ligation or a hysterectomy?
A single penny shimmers against the steel interior.
I would often sneak down the dirt road, hide behind a big oak, and watch the old man feed his chickens or work in his small garden.
As we walk down the aisle, crackly speakers on the bus walls begin to croon, “Sad eyes, turn the other way … .”
At work, I advise others to focus on communication.
“Make love to me.” Leave her. Stay for me.
I am taking her pulse, her left wrist only, because her right hand is lightly held by a man.
“Which way do you eat your corn? Lines or circles?”
It’s almost midnight when they knock on the window of my basement apartment and ask me to come to the back door, and I do.
“I’m telling you,” my wife said, “since you’ll find out eventually.”
I’m staring at a “Short List Of Emotions.”
“That looks like a joint,” I say. “Yup,” she says.
Twenty years ago, one of my community college students wrote an essay about a day so busy that she forgot to pick up her seven-year-old daughter at school.
I pulled it onto the dock and bent down to remove the hook, then I watched as it flipped around next to me, first briskly, then slowly, and then limply, something I had never seen before.
My grandma’s made me potato soup to get my mind off this boy who’s dumped me.
Three drunk teenagers play tag in the park.
I wanted our first date to end at midnight but he didn’t leave until 2.
My moon-drunk eyes followed the shining black line of water up the canyon, across massive cliffs, and into the endless sky.
Breathe in, breathe out. It hurts so much. Can't take it any longer, need to get away.