Category Archives: History
Del Valle
No one can quite grasp the specifics of my situation. This scares me. Each person I share my story with serves as proxy for a potential juror, eventually to be culled from my bank of peers, whoever they are. And as their eyes inevitably glaze over when I try to explain the nuances–critical to my [...]
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The-best-I’m-writing-this-love-letter-so-it-looks-like-I actually-care-about-this-meeting-enough-to-take-notes love letter ever
My love (light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul),
This meeting is boring. And my thoughts, as they often do, return to you. What a two weeks, two months, two lives this has been. Who knows why anything happens? I’m so glad you come from a skeptical, rational place, because this [...]
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Remember?
I’m worst at what I do best. And for this gift? I feel blessed.
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Willful suspension and phantom pains
The short distance I’ve covered since October, belies the activity. I was too long clinging to assumptions that are more accurately described as delusions. In retrospect, it’s easier to see the logic, that when not convoluted by false hope, was pretty accurate in its forecast. I hate that I was right. There was an agent, [...]
Supernatural indulgences
Why was I so convinced that this was different. It felt different. Because she called me, “Angel?” Ridiculous. Yet, because we met at a time when I was fragile, I likened her existence to the proactive, blessed supernatural. I wanted so badly for the fairy tale we started in those beautiful emails to be real. [...]
Posted in: History Tagged as: angel, dissonance, duplicity, existence, fairy tale, indulgence, indulgences, miracle, screenplay, supernatural, usury Leave a comment
Eulogy
Here, then, lay our reflections
Silent hymns to our complicity
The capricious change of heart and
The biases of memory
The rapture of despair and
The inevitable agony
Of off-white lies and furtive cries
And doe-eyed volatility
The promise of redemption
And shame at our complacency
Duplicitous omissions
That mock our claims of honesty
I burn for a reprise
Of our consumptive, common fallacy
The brief joy of our [...]
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The frailest of gestures
I open the door and I can smell her before I see her, that unique amalgam of Camels, Maybelline, and chardonnay.
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Simple, focal
A feeling of dread washes over me. And suddenly I’m afraid of everything. I’m scared of the dark. I’m scared of my shadow. I’m scared of strange noises. I’m scared of the silence. I’m scared of dying. And all around I see death in everything. Something is whispering in my ear. Not the low, guttural [...]
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Five feet, five inches
I had only ever heard her tell one lie before but it was a lie that she often repeated. I should clarify. There were probably other lies. But, this is the only one for which I had confirmation. Her lies were never actual commissions. There were no claims of I was with so-and-so at so-and-so’s [...]
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Lessons from a five-year old
“Daddy, who was that lady you were talking to?”
“Lady? Oh, the waitress? That was the waitress, Baby.”
“You like ladies don’t you, Daddy?”
“What? Yes, I guess. Daddy likes ladies, Daddy likes most…”
“You love ladies don’t you, Daddy?”
“What? what do you…”
“I mean, you love the idea of them.”
That’s my at the time 5 year-old daughter pretty much [...]
The downward spiral
I get to the restaurant five minutes late to find her waiting halfway between the entrance and the back. I feel good and it’s good to see her.
“You look like you haven’t slept in a few days,” she says. “Are you drinking?”
“It’s good to see you too.”
“I worry about you.” The moment of tenderness is [...]
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The bus to county
I remember three things: 1) The song playing on the bus (yes, they played the radio) was “Gangstas Make the World Go ‘Round” and all the gangstas—real and wannabe—rapped along; 2) There was a guy in the cage at the front of the bus de-toxing from something and every time he vomited on himself the [...]
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The Weekend
She sits alone at the plastic bench
She uses for a table
Holds a hot mug to her lips
Presses the hard bones in her elbows
To the roughly textured plastic
Of the off-white table top
This morning is softer and
She enjoys the solitude
And she, in fact,
Isn’t lonely, though
Maybe sometimes longs for
Another type of mourning
I like it best to think of [...]
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You are what you love (and not what loves you back)
She’d been gone for ten minutes before I decided to leave.
When I come to I’m face down in the dirt and moss, and I can see ants crawling over my right hand, which is still holding my phone. I have three messages.
It’s hot. Sweat is pooling in all the cracks of my body. The arch [...]
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God doesn’t play dice, I do