February 2012
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I remember there was a time when I asked you to read something of mine. Just a simple piece of short fiction, I said. I need another pair of eyes for my revision. I’d written it for you but couldn’t tell you that. When you finished, you asked me about writing; not my process for that particular story, but in general. I hadn’t expected that. I can be so naive. I wish I’d...
Anonymous asked: There is more than one way to break a heart.
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There’s probably a pill for this sort of thing.
Anonymous asked: Write a novel, please?
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the false prophet of dartmouth avenue
You think of a title before you’ve even thought of the story. The False Prophet of Dartmouth Avenue, you scribble in the pocket notepad that doesn’t see enough use. You pat yourself on the back for being clever. The juxtaposition of antiquated social pariahs with modern city planning will surely be thought of as well-constructed, dense, and...
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Maybe you remember the story of fair-faced Icarus, strapping himself into his sandalwood wings and promising his father that they’ll be reunited across the sea, even as he gave a wary eye to the feathers secured with wax. How hot the sun must have been. Maybe you remember that story, of reassurances and falsehoods meant to soothe. I only bring it up because these ribs, the ones beneath your...
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In seven words, I’ve finally identified my writing style: I am trying to break your heart.
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Drunk on bad poetry and no-label rums. Drunk on shipwrecked motels and vagrancy. Drunk on losing money, losing people, losing teeth. Drunk on no sleep. Drunk on travel by night, thumb hitched to every pair of headlights.
Rarely spend these days sober.
Anonymous asked: Will you write me a lullaby to fall back into the numbed haze of feigned smiles? I want so many intangible things, I want so badly that turning up the corners of my mouth becomes too difficult a chore because of all the wars to be lost inside of me.
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There are only two other customers in the laundromat, a wizened Latino man and an impossibly beautiful girl I judge to be roughly my age. We’re on opposite rows of washing machines. I’ve seen the movies, I know that writers are convinced of a magic in laundromats once the midnight hour has struck. I’ll be a quarter short and ask her if she can break a dollar, we’ll laugh...
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Can’t keep this dream alive much longer.
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Anonymous asked: How do you keep yourself from falling in love? Do you/can you, really?
January 2012
Bereft of sensation. Forehead lightly pressed against the train window. Everything blurs with speed.
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‘You can’t put a price on happiness!’ she chimed as I stood aside, pockets empty and teeth broken in my hands.
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I came of age in the City That Never Sleeps, where the people never smiled and the coffee rarely helped. At night the windows in the skyscrapers were lit up, those brilliant towers filled with insurance claims agents and temps and ad copywriters whiling away the hours until the sun would come back up. I met a girl in the City That Never Sleeps, who told me she hadn’t slept since she visited...
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Consider the first time you thought you wouldn’t make it. The first time it pained you to wake up, to move through the day. Consider the moment you realized the world didn’t have your best interests in mind, that things aren’t always going to be okay.
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“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? ”
– Albert Camus (via thesaltwaternight)
He remembered smiling more as a child. None of the photos supported this, but it was what he recalled. Smiles and sunny days and snow all winter, never slush.
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She woke most mornings and reminded herself that she wasn’t the hero of a story, that she wasn’t trapped in the opening chapters of a mid-break act. She questioned where the interlude cards might go, where an omniscient narrator might ruminate on her early-morning vicambulations through the empty, rain-slicked streets. [sunken eyes cast downward] one such card might read. [i’d...
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Things I’m Not Going To Talk About:
the drunk call I received at 2:30 this morning, two hours before I had to get up for work. Even if sleep hadn’t been an issue, that was a call I didn’t need, never needed, and for some reason didn’t hang up on.
every barb and nettle in that voice, that slurring voice, the one that sought to remind me of all my faults
how said phone...
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Lovers (cont.)
And then there was Natalie, who had never had someone walk her home before. She told me that her last name was Amberson but that she’d taken it randomly from a phonebook, and that her true surname was an eastern European glottal string of consonants. I asked her where her family was and she changed the subject so quickly I got whiplash. In the eaves of her...
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photographs from your early twenties
magnificentruin:
the line of empty glasses and bottles; the perpetual cigarette; the funny things you just said.
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I have to be all of these different people. Every day is just a shuffling of the old cracking masks. Is that why, then, that the times I’m truly alone—even if just for an evening—I see for one clear moment that I’m not okay?
Anonymous asked: How do you tell someone how much they mean to you? Where do you even begin?
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At times I believed too much in the alchemy of words, or not enough. But they were all I had. Just these airy words and the assumption that, once invoked, they would get what I wanted. Like money. Like God. I’ve won hearts and lost my own, often in the same breath.
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Anonymous asked: you're extremely pretentious
Anonymous asked: Tell me about someone you've hurt.
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Another one of those hollow nights where beer might fill these cavities but I’m just going to go workout instead.