“I rolled a six.” “Okay,” says the GM, “you get a tent.”
“I rolled a six.” “Okay,” says the GM, “you get a tent.”
I ease the pressure to coax the string to fuller resonance.
. . . zooming through Allahabad’s lawless traffic, my bicycle racing sixteen-wheeler trucks, I’m navigating Google Maps with one hand, readjusting my N95 dustmask with the other.
. . . we’re almost leg to leg, sipping cocktails in a candlelit lounge.
I take a hit and remember why D.A.R.E. exists.
Steeped in my English major but flirting with medicine, I sat on my dorm room floor and listened through the phone to my father’s cynical perspective on being a doctor.
The chill seeps into my flesh, prickles at the skin revealed by too-short sleeves and chills the layer of sweat just beneath.
I peer off the deck at the swimming pool far below, its underwater light illuminated purple.
"Marital status, single," I say, shaking my head and smiling coyly at my lover in the other armchair.
Sitting on the cliffside bench, I watch the sun slide below the horizon.
I watch him sit lotus-legged on the thin carpet that hides the stained marble as he breathes in air . . .
I was only nineteen when, every Friday, you would stop by Jacque Michelle’s, the chic boutique where I worked on the Hill, to deliver curated music cassette tapes.
The judges of the contest praised my drawing.
My husband and I lounged on the couch watching YouTube highlights from Stanley Kubrick’s movie The Shining.
With powdered sugar dusting our faces and fingers from the half-moon cookies we spent half the day baking, we turn on Channel 22.
I remember, for my first 18 years, I couldn’t fathom kissing.
Mom blow-dries my hair into straw.
They call me The Dunce, but I know the answer.
As I approached my parents’ tailgate, I spotted him immediately: my prodigal brother, fresh from eight months in rehab.
Four upper teeth, three lower, You bounce, smiling, leaning on the red Arabian armrest passed down from three families.