Stories

There was only the gulf of our steps, our breathing brittle as string.

Before there was air, sublime silence. There was no one not to hear it.

The stars begin to turn clockwise, freeing us of all consequences.

If every present
is possible, how can we have eyes to see?

I drag my sheets as Earth drags her tangled mess of tides.

Even as a child, I was skeptical—testing God when He wasn’t looking.

His flannel sleeve dangled into the flame. Pretty soon, I was on fire too.

Our father crumbled after her affair. We watched him for signs of cracking.

Maybe he was preparing for a disaster that would never happen.

I thought about the little graveyard where the man would be laid.

he has come to write like nervous wasps in my mind like a grocery list.

Her trust in me is a swirled marble sinking slowly in an aqua pool.

the bible doesn’t tell us how they stormed up to his ark beat their fists

What right had Flora, of all people, to pronounce on what was strange?

In the school smock, I looked like an angel in search of her crèche.

When he bent close to her, his balaclava glowed silvery in the dying sunlight.

Was he a good man or a bad man? Was it necessary, even, to speculate?

I must tell you what it is like to be human, or you will drift away.

If I bring the wrong pen the words look like snow piles on an empty page.

Her last relationship was with Elsa’s Instagram, truth be told. If Elsa is going to accept her follower invite, it needs to look believable. You did a bad thing, she thinks, and this is what you get.

“I wonder what will stay longer,” Frick said. “Me or that headstone.”

After almonds after anchovies. After baguettes, a plate of cheese.

Some night soon you’ll haul yourself out from far beneath this life.

Glad to hear the garden can be worse than being awake

Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

She’ll grow into a beauty, but she needn’t contend with that yet.

We had run out of every necessity. You name it, we didn’t have it.

I let you pull my hair, throw me to the rocks, disarrange me.

Thank goodness Dad died—sounds awful but he left his condo paid for.