It’s the last night in this house, Shirley Ann Place, the house with my mother’s name, the tiny house in which we fell apart all the way and broke in a million pieces and slowly put ourselves back together again like a vase that was meant to be broken. We cried and screamed and had sex and the neighbors heard all. Trash being taken out … Continue reading Here is the House
What kind of bullshit math equation is gun + gun = life? What kind of even bullshittier math equation is no/not great job = no health care = death? Continue reading Maximum Effort
7 minutes to go and I have never felt more lost. New year, same me, same mess, same mistakes. Have I grown at all? Regressed? This isn’t really even a post – the blank screen has not been big enough in the latter part of 2021 to contain all my emotion. 5 minutes to go. Time is a construct. We make it up. All there … Continue reading Just Under the Wire
My mother died a week ago today. I wrote this on the plane coming back home after being with her for her last 10 days in this life. I don’t know why this time the patterns at 36,000 feet below me are so comforting. It’s like I’ve never even noticed them before. The trees that partition off crops like rivers, the strange dirt tributaries that … Continue reading Nothingness, Then All at Once
When the pandemic started, I stopped brushing my teeth in the morning. I don’t know why. Well, I do, though. I rationalized it a little like this: I am working from home. No one sees me. I won’t eat breakfast until 10. I need lots of coffee in the mornings, so I don’t want to ruin my coffee with toothpaste. And so on. I would … Continue reading The 460th Day of March 2020
Our friend Brandon died this week of a brain tumor. Brandon was the shit. He was funny, smart, active – a trusted friend, a caring husband, a great dad, a thoughtful person, just the guy you knew would always be in your corner. Even if he was across the country, he would be the first person to encourage, throw out a joke, just A. Great. … Continue reading Got to Be the Way It Is
So this is our new normal. At least for now. For the time being. For the foreseeable future. I have never heard all the world so still in a city. I have never been afraid of the night like I am right now, sitting in my own backyard at midnight on a Saturday. Stripped of the comforting sounds of distant freeways, people chatting across the … Continue reading Night Bird
This is a love letter to my sister. She is 9 years older than me. Here is what I know: She loves horror fiction. She loves Dan Fogelberg and Kansas and Pink Floyd. Her laugh is the best, and she laughs a lot. Time and all kinds of miles in between us and there is not a day that goes by that I am not … Continue reading Don’t Wait
I’m on the Pacific side this flight, Looking out to the giant blueness, Reading Freeman’s Dictionary of the Undoing. I think about my wealth of privilege. I think about how I have started this decade by paying an artist to adorn my One Body with her rendition of my protector. I feel good about how this transaction benefits both our lives. About how it might … Continue reading We Need Undoing
I’ve been thinking about my father a lot lately. Which I know is kind of a normal thing to do for most people – to think about their parents, whether they are living or deceased. While it may be normal for most, I’ve never made a lot of space in my heart/brain for thoughts about my dad, minus the times when I absolutely had to … Continue reading Closer Than You Think
Pocketful of Venom 
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