All of us get some say into how we die. Obviously, a few of us will get cancer, will get hit by cars, will succumb to bad genes. And there are the obvious cases – the extremists, the alcoholics, the addicts – who are sort of forcing the issue. But for the rest of us, the even-keeled with average genes, we choose a little bit … Continue reading The cosmic choice

“You never ask for help,” they say. An offense to them, those who would help. Because help can be more selfish than its wrapper suggests. The word is a sweet sugar coating to motives that are often more acrid. To accept their help is to reinforce their facade – their goodness – and I rebuke the idea that I have a responsibility to you when … Continue reading The thousand mile journey

It’s a relic of a different time really. Conceived of when there was still an Alamo Drafthouse on 6th street, when Craigslist still hosted personal ads and missed connections, when rent in Hyde Park was $800 a month. This book started the way they all do, really, for me. One little page of prose, imbued with enough meaning to birth a world. I was 19 … Continue reading Coming soon: The sophomore novel

I wonder if I’ve been ungracious to 31. And yet I have avoided this blank screen. It feels as if all the nice things I could say about that year are covered in a film I don’t want to touch. But that is not scorn for the girl who was 31, it is what can only be described as pity. Shining fruits sitting in her … Continue reading And 32

I’ve grown weary of writing about my life. What once felt like a ground strike of purpose, the filling of a great pool one cupful at a time, has become a meretricious dance of expectancy. I no longer observe my life in poems and find narratives in my woe. I gaze up at a moment of irony or a spring of hurt and eye it … Continue reading 31

The girl who turned thirty was 6 days into her next big adventure. She’d been laid off from the comfortable place she’d been perched just 6 weeks before. She’d called a friend for lunch who had canceled the morning of and she’d never heard from her again. She was terrified and hopeful and praying it exceeded her expectations. It didn’t, but she grew. She published … Continue reading 30

The year has gone in two clean halves. The first was a ghost I buried and mourned, one who lingered graciously until the summer months to fulfill its unfinished business. It was indulgent, that half. The easy forgetting of the thing that fell it. The hopeful carrying on of someone too blind to the circumstances to understand the foolishness of it all.  The second was … Continue reading Blood moon

$9.35 is the cost of peace. Postage on a package that carries the last leverage you’ll ever have and the last words I ever need to say. The sender and the recipient read the same, because no matter what, it needs to make it to you. I won’t be taking it back. For less than $10 I can be done with what ails me. And … Continue reading The cost of peace

If this title is vaguely familiar to you, you’ve been here a while. I wrote a blog post called the same thing February 18, 2021. One of the absolute worst months I can remember having. To be honest with you, I never revisited that post. I just reached the end of my thoughts and I thought of a name, one title that could summarize the … Continue reading Of Love and its Horsemen: The book

We as a species have decided that time means something. That no one in their twenties is responsible enough to plan for the future and no one in their thirties is lively enough to stay out past 10. Forty is when you stop caring what people think and sixty is when you’ve paid enough dues to be released from the indenture of society. And because … Continue reading 29