I go through cycles of awareness about how awful people are to each other, and I'm in one where I notice it everywhere.

And I'm sorry.

I know I'm awful to people, too, because that's what we humans do to each other, and I'm sorry if it's been you, or you, or you.

This is on my arm:


( Read more... )

This is what I do in my fiction class.

An exercise based off the poem "What We Carry" by Dorianne Laux.

( What We Carry )

In my only other set of clothes, I go out into the dawn. Everyone else in the hostel is sleeping, the courtyard finally quiet. I pull my hair back, knotted and sticky with humidity. The strength to walk comes to me when I see the ocean, and I go down to the edge where the tide is starting to recede. I head north, away from all the ( Read more... )

I have never really understood celebrating the New Year ( Read more... )

I wake up in the middle of the night and forget where I am. There is a moment of transition, sleep to waking, the half dream of the old house and the weight of Brian's body next to me, the reality of my drafty, smokey room when I open my eyes. I'm dizzy, and there is a deep, frightening ache in my belly. I stumble into the bathroom, ( Read more... )

The sun hangs low, muffled by grey clouds, smouldering orange. It is nothing like sunset in New Mexico. The sky is grey and the water is all grey, but as soon as I see the crash of the waves, all the weight is lifted from me.

The beach is still crowded, even in November. People scurrying in and out of buildings to escape the sea winds. ( Read more... )

It's dark when I wake up. I hear some whispering in the back, but mostly, the bus is sleeping. Jeremy's head is on my shoulder and he's snoring quietly. The stars and moon outside are bright and looking at them fills me with a joy and sadness so intrinsically connected that I can't tell them apart.

My limbs feel light and my stomach ( Read more... )

We're a few hours out of the city now. A bus full of lowly people elevated high above the road and the miles and miles of, flat, autumnal nothing around us. I have jumped off the cliff face but I haven't hit the bottom. Maybe there is no bottom.

I've never traveled by bus before, am not used to being stuck next to strangers for ( Read more... )

Sunrise glints off the leaves cutting through the air like razors. I watch my breath float out of my body and hang in front of my face. In, and out. A ghost emerging every few seconds, the dead part of me leaving my warm body. I'm sitting on the edge of a dry fountain next to a young tree, its leaves not yet gone, their five points brown and ( Read more... )

Every one of my muscles is shaking. Every single molecule. On the bathroom sink, right next to Brian's electric razor, is a little plastic indicator that could decide the rest of my life. Water flows out of the icy pipes and I splash it on my face, numb from cold now. I don't look. I don't want to look.

I go into the kitchen, grab a ( Read more... )