#107

it’s not so much that I hate you. Just that I can’t trust you. Yesterday I was reading our grocery list and you added dishwasher detergent. We don’t have a dishwasher.
Without prompting, you said you bought some berry flavored tums at the store. The label said mint. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but when I showed you the label, you still insisted they were berry!
But then you accidentally shredded my sweater in the wash, and said you gave it to a homeless man. I found it in the trash.
You told me stories of your high school basketball team placing third in the state. Imagine my confusion when I found out you placed second. Your lies have no reason.
So when you say you love me, I just don’t know.

thirtyeight

I had a dream about you for the first time in as long as I can remember. There was a bonfire, and there were many other people, but I can't recall any of them. Only you. And the things I said. The most horrible, vile things I've said and didn't think to say before. The look on your face was all I needed, and my heart exploded with joy. I had never wanted to hurt anyone more in such a vicious manner than I did in that moment, just you and me. It was everything I think other people consider heaven to be.

I can't decide if this makes me a bad person in real life.

#106

the room was well lit, but it smelled heavy and dark, like paint fumes without the mind-liberating qualities.
they pulled down the sheet, thicker than i expected, not a 250 count, like my ones at home. i nodded that it was him, yes, at least, it was him based on the only picture i'd ever seen.
strange that they called me, the only still-relevant phone number in his rolodex (and who still uses a rolodex?) even though i was too young to remember ever meeting him and my phone number had changed 8 times since then.
strange that a life can be so innocuous that your own nephew is unaffected by the blue of your lips, the odd, cold pallor of your skin.
they covered him and escorted me out of the room. condolences and slips of paper were handed to me in the same moment, and i accepted both before heading out the door.
the day was well lit, but not like the room, but everything still smelled heavy and dark. i looked at my phone, wondering who to call, who to tell about my very bizarre day, the way i felt suddenly hungry, and realized there was not a single person who would understand.

thirtyseven

"You asked me once, in an exasperated sigh, if I believed in anything at all, and I replied with something cynical and funny and we laughed."

The coffee burned a little bit, not enough cream.

"It's been a while, or long enough at least, and I think you've seen what I meant, and why I said it."

I don't even so much like coffee.

"And now, I still have the same answer but I don't think it's as funny anymore."

#105

There were days he wished he was a smoker. Standing outside, staring out at nothing, never knowing what to do with his hands, nervously sliding them into his pockets, feeling chapstick, feeling an old straw wrapper, feeling a loose thread. Then pulling his hands out, one, then the other.
His coworkers would come out with a casual, mumbled hello, sliding a white cigarette, sometimes the first in the pack, sometimes the lonely last. A flash of fire, a calm and satisfied sigh with the first drag in the middle of a long day.
He licked his lips, shoved one hand in his pocket, another through his thinning hair.

#104

she was free-floating and beautiful, the front of her skirt tied up in a knot to escape imminent bike chain fate. the back of it flapping behind her in cascades of earthy yellow, tan, sunburnt orange. her shoulders, freckled, shades of pink and brown, lines running across her back, detailing every shirt, every dress she had worn that summer.
the wheels kicked up dirt behind her and she practiced riding, one hand, no hands; steering with her bare feet now.
she laughed and it trickled up the sky.
her neighbor paused from hanging clothes on the line, saw the girl, took a moment to turn her palms up and smile at the open sky.

thirtysix

The bricks of the old corner pub were cold to the touch, and the rain was quiet enough that you could only hear it in your heart. Cars hummed by as I leaned my forehead against the wall. I could see the paint chipping around the foundation, white flecks scattered on the sidewalk around my feet. I don’t think this is the way things are supposed to be.

thirtyfive

The drops of blood on that yellow shirt remind him of the tiny ponds dotting his grandfathers pasture outside Cardiff. He’d visit every summer and most Christmases. The Christmases were best. Meat pies and muddy hillsides. 

His grandmother gave him that shirt.

thirtyfour

Her hair was black and maroon, but not mostly either. Unsure eyes glancing but not seeking, and with probably too much makeup. Surprisingly, she was the type of person to pay attention to the pre-flight safety instruction presentation.

I forgot to ask what her tattoo meant. It’s Hebrew inside a sun on the back of her shoulder.

I think the maroon was dye.

#103

tomorrow my new brother comes. it's not right to hold it against him- the fact that my mother actually wants him. that's the strangest thing- that the adoption agency wouldn't think to check abortion records. i had always been the thorn in my mother's side, the "miracle child" only to my grandparents, and even that was a long time coming.
you'd think she would have stopped drinking after a crazy drunken night ended in me. you'd think she'd have the decency to give me away after a failed attempt on my life. anyone in their right mind could even wonder a half-illiterate woman with an unsurmountable hatred for her biological daughter could possibly be a day away from a son.
ruminate all you want; i've given up on logic.
i began life as a lame duck daughter, i guess that's how i'll end it.

#102 (had 2 98's)

you painstakingly painted every flower in the field. your hands, old, but not with age, still steady as ten years ago, as still and unchanging as ten years from now. each bloom waited, felt your brush, turning yellow turning pink and blue and beautiful, turning toward you.
every flower loves me, loves me not.

#100

he was always the ace of the family. aced tests, learned to fly, got top awards in any academic extracurricular club.
despite all that, life has always been a little over his head. he never really got it. little problems of life, the right thing to say when a girl starts crying over her backstabbing "best" friend, giving the scolded dog a little pat on the head, giving mom an extra minute of peace after coming home from her second job.
she always told me how he was going to get us out of this place. how he would move us away from this neighborhood, somewhere warm for a change. i watched her eyes grow far away, her brave, put-on smile turn to something wistful, wonderfully hopeful.
she truly believed he would save us. if only he was real.

#99

tick, tick, crash.
and hell, now it's all upended. that's what i get for putting my life out there. for getting together with her without any semblance of a plan.
time ticks down, i drive downtown, and is it so fatuous to think i could maintain order?
it wasn't love the way people think of it. she knew it from the start.
emotions change, fall out of place, gather drama and chaos. they are sticky.
tick, tick, crash.
i need a new metronome.

#98

maybe it's because my entire diet is comprised of arabic coffee, water, and the occasional supreme taco with extra sour cream.
maybe it's because i started flushing my ritalin down the toilet at the ripe old age of eight.
sometimes i wonder if it's caused by bad air; this city is so weighted down, it's so thick.

no matter what it is, my heart skips a beat when you walk by.