Nonfiction

My lover asked me to turn my gaze, tilt my chin, adjust my limbs. I watched him tune my real body to match his imagination. I saw the photographs he took of me flick across the camera’s screen. I was spectating. 

Never in my early thoughts of grad school was there a chance that I could fail. 

When I stun an animal, and cut it, and pump its blood out, and decide that it is really dead, I give it some time. A few minutes before I begin skinning, to fully leave its body, just in case.

I watched my mother die. I just didn’t know it at the time. It was Saturday morning. I had spent my second night in a row by her side in the ICU. There was a rhythm to my visits. I had to teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I would stay all day Wednesday, and […]

Maybe somebody really should come and murder me, I thought at the sound of a creaky floorboard, then I wouldn’t have to go to work.

All the same, when it began to heal, I was stricken with an inexplicable sadness. I had come to identify with this scar. It felt like my history in flesh, fading away. 

I’ll make you love me, and then I win.

Drinking, unlike most things, is easy to predict. Here is what I know: Nine beers will put me on my ass.