When Will You Be Home?

It's, you know, pretty much the same. You haven't really missed much. They tore down that old house that was a part of the Underground Railroad, then moved the Foodland about fifty yards to the left onto the land where it was. They're putting in a day care at the high school, and your brother never leaves the basement, writing the first halves of a hundred good songs.

Why Was I Afraid?

Before she lied we always talked about going to Ireland to climb the cliffs by the ocean, so I decided to go on my own and nearly died when I slid on the rocks and fell to the beach. My mind slipped into the sea and for hours I laid under the indifferent sky settling onto the earth like a black and billowing tarp, a cold, soggy wind blowing sand to mingle with my blood. Before I passed out I remember thinking, that's it? I was amazed that this felt no worse than anything I had already dealt with, that the hardest of life comes only to the tired.

Homemade Nightmares

My optometrist says that if I don't start taking proper care of my glasses my vision will get worse faster. He says I should keep them in the case at night and clean them every day, but some things are better than being healthy, and I'm addicted to the way dirty glasses catch the light. Everywhere I go, cobwebs of passing ghosts swim to the sky and my heart seizes just before I realize.


Impossible terror, then a matchstick of hope.