Here lies the old man bent
to the work of dying in a bed
not his own, his toothless mouth
collapsing into the terminal
mask of his face. His scalp
shining like bone china.
His eyes dimmed and rolling back
into a brain woolly with static.
His words smearing to
a moan of every meaning—
a cry from the edge of
the precipice, a postcard from
glimpse into the void. His
toenails clinging … Read more

S. talks of suicide.

She cries. I hold her. What else can I do? She’s the love of my life and she’s in pain so I make her something to eat. She tells me she doesn’t deserve me. That she can see she’s hurting me. I say she’ll feel better after she eats something.

What was she thinking, she asks later, when we’re watching television. How can she do this to me, she asks. I tell her to forget all about it. Like it was the first time … Read more

I was nine years old when the full moon leapt into my life. It was my first day of wearing glasses, and so my first day of clear seeing. I felt dizzy from so much seeing—from leaves on trees and letters on signs and the sudden complexity of human faces. I was holding my mother’s hand as we crossed a dark parking lot, and I glanced up.

I reeled. My mother says I screamed.

… Read more