If you were a meadow I was a child's plastic bracelet. If you were a keen-nosed dog I was a tennis ball lying in a corner. If you were a plastic bag I was a clutter of oranges. We didn't live so much as stumble into incident. Into incident. Were the days that preceded frozen? Static without happenstance, a blank? It wasn't true. People don't ( Read more... )

     The ants. The ants. Countless.  Deliberately infinite. Not Fire Ants, those vociferous, toxic, far-off creatures. Your run-of-the-mill, dot-sized black ants ( Read more... )

"And all those lonely nights down by the river
Brought me bread and water, water in
But though I tried so hard, my little darling
I couldn't keep the night from coming in."

This is a memory. She is not sure if it presents itself entirely, or in lisping part, or just a touch too boldly, tilting into fiction. They are on a school trip, all of them not ( Read more... )

  It was 3:35am. I woke up parched, dreaming for a glass of cold water. It felt illicit to be awake, to sentiently inhabit these shared spaces. The neighborhood asleep was a nexus of hallway lights and puddles of water collecting under taps, in dark drains. It was a city of corridors, one like all things different in darkness. Regarding it I felt ( Read more... )

And then the time came when my father told me my bones were too large and no longer pliant, feather-borne enough, that the rope wouldn't support them, I'd have to move from the Big Top tightrope and to the elephant tent. I hung up my spangled costume which was now 2 sizes too small and running out of glitter, and changed into a pair of dungarees. ( Read more... )

That year there was a great heat-wave. Everywhere, earthworms popping up dead from the ground and parched household pets found ways to paw the refridgerator door open. Back from work people found their calico cats, their loved mongrel dogs, sitting in front of sweating cartons of orange juice, vegetables relinquishing their freshness, enjoying the ( Read more... )

Romantic Fiction ( Read more... )

"this midnight I aspire
To see, mirrored among the embers, curled
In flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world."

-F.Scott Fitzgerald

The circus had arrived in the city. On the way to University I passed the Big Top which wasn't so big after all, merely a little larger than a party tent, and faded, a row of flags flapping weakly in the wind ( Read more... )

It's like a movie, she said ( Read more... )

Four days ago I saw him ( Read more... )