Here is something we have learned time and again: you need not love everything. You do not have to devote yourself to what you thought you’d enjoy. You can decide, whenever you like, that what you …
& after the first course, your corsage flatlines Beautiful convulsions Then, it sprouts wings, thorns, claws its way up your arm to swallow you goosebump by goosebump
It was six o'clock in the morning when I started collecting clocks, and now it's 9:37. 10:37. I mean it's 10:00cm. These clocks are all wrong. Time is spilling out of them and getting everything. . . …
He had kept the bulk of his music library, which covered every genre from obscure Sub-Saharan drum tracks recorded on cell-phones to honey-tongued R&B to Norwegian black metal, in his parents' …
Once, a long time ago, I knew a guy named Martin who did not like to be called Marty, though I'd heard another man, Charles, who himself allowed people to call him Chuck, call him Marty on several …
He stared down the neck of the guitar like a rifle sight. The shelves in the glass case between us were lined with switchblades, laptops, engagement rings and arrowheads. A small fan on the counter …
The morning of Claire's funeral, I lie naked on the table and wait for her mourners to arrive. Thomas scrapes a knife against whetstone in the kitchen. When he appears above me, the blade glints …
Charles looked at himself in the rearview mirror and saw that his eyes were no longer red--there was that at least. He wished that he had taken the shower offered to him at Lionel's place, because he …
On the day we found Mrs. Lovász, I didn't kill myself. Which is a funny thing to say--finding Mrs. Lovász. We knew where she was. She was only dead, not missing.
His skin was peeled in so many places, you can’t recognize the color of his hair, but when you view the rest of the tufts on his forehead, one could say it was just normal brown…He was ancient, …
It’s late on a Saturday night and Metalhead is at some kid’s basement party. The kid got the new Slayer album that afternoon and has it blaring because his parents are not home. Rockgod holds …
Curtis Smith watched from across the street as the boy argued with Lena Johnson in front of the movie theater. She had probably bought tickets for the wrong movie. Or maybe Andre didn’t want to see …
That their hair was that flat black painted on the inside of a mirror—that’s what I remember most about those boys. And that their eyes were always turned down. You could never see their color, …
As they put me to sleep, my mouth fills with the dust of the moon. I expect to choke on the silt but instead it slides in and out, and in and out, and I am, impossibly, breathing. I have dreamt …
I like your stomach hair, I told him, and he frowned down at me, confused, curious. Then he smiled, a slack-jawed smile. I braided them, the hairs, wild wiry things, pale like the goose-necked lamp …
The first one, a visitor from out of town, slipped on a mossy rock and fell 10,000 feet into the gorge’s open mouth. Then Marcy Eldritch, a week from her thirteenth birthday, leaned too far out a …
My second husband once walked into the house by the lake, carrying a very large basket of beets. They were freshly picked, dusty with dirt. I said, What is that. He said, These are beets. I said, Why …
It’s following us, pull over, my husband says, to which I say, It’s dark, to which he says, Please, Ellie, let’s not fight over this one, and so I pull to the side of the road. Lo and behold, …
Cheese melts in London like nowhere else. Old mixes with new like nowhere else. The city is blessed. But a girl can sob her heart out in London's streets and no one will stop, no one will raise an …
A bird flew into the window. To me its wingspan seemed enormous. I ran out into the garden and on the path lay a large woodpecker. His beak was half open. The woodpecker was having trouble breathing. …