A Quiet Sunday

Jesús swept. Hank’s Hardware Shop (“We want your screws to be loose!”) closes at 6 pm on Sundays. Watch check: 5:50. He kept sweeping, still wondering whether his technique was any more efficient than that used by mentally handicapped workers. As always he quit caring pretty quickly. Wood shavings clustered and cuddled with bent nails…

Literary Purge

Calmly I wait for agitation and delirium to override my ego’s inability to wait for and work for a shitty first draft. The two competitors, Insecurity and Overconfidence, face off against each other like former friends finally at the realization that only one can, in the end, hold the prize. I use “prize” loosely since…

The Little Things

I got a break from sorting sordid clothes to help a lady move a just-bought mattress to her “just around the corner” house. Ricky and I entered his stripped red truck and he asked if he could smoke. I said sure and soon tobacco smoke filled the car, smooth as the Soul coming from the…

Peanut Butter and Jelly

I finally made a PB&J in the ECV dining hall! Up to this point, a sign reading “When getting peanut butter, PLEASE spread on a plate rather than on bread. Thank you” had been a powerful, and anxiety inducing, deterrent. I was worried I would forget and the peanut butter applier would contact bread and…

Tangerines

The tangerines were going bad. Paul knew this. He could see it. Between the yellow bananas and the big red apples were the little oranges, which weren’t oranges and which weren’t orange, completely. One was different. Walking around the table to the hutch, Paul picked up the dull green tangerine, and powder came off in his…

Second Chance

The eyes did not blink. Do fish even sleep? thought Kyle, as he tapped on the glass of the small aquarium that he’d bought on sale at LowMart, right past all of the gardening gear and the platoons of plastic rakes and bags of standing soil that had seemed set specifically there to stop Kyle…

Shell-Shocked

Like nautilus to a shell are men to this world. We find a home that we see suits us, or appears to, and claim it a match made in heaven, literally. We do not see that it is not-all-us. Instead we insult all else and declare ourselves superior through soul alone. The rulers we are, the…

After

He looked at the phone in his hands. Had he just left that voicemail? The green screen showed a five minute call to a familiar but nameless number. Shoot. Two months ago in a coffeehouse, she’d said to never contact her again. She’d worn that red and orange floral dress he always loved. She hadn’t…

Trapped

Like swimming in a pool of honey This Anxiety does slow me All around me sweet and happy things occur But I feel trapped and sluggish Like a feeling of nothing just stuck in my chest It cloys, thick and sweet in my maw, making my throat somber To combat this inner, I pump in…

Weekend Plans

Her voice lurched between a high-pitched whine, which narrowed  into a “question?”-implied silence, and a low throaty drop, reminiscent of the stuffed way a person sounds when they talk right before throwing up. It made Ethan nauseous. And angry. It made him imagine jumping up from his seat in the middle of the dimly lit…

Being in a crowd

  Sometimes I can’t look at people when I walk, because feeling the obligation to acknowledge the sentience of so many selves makes me want to throw up. A landscape of moving cut-outs more easily please the egoist, and less easily harm him, too. The bubbled being of Solipsism is a so very sensitive thing.

Fan

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I wish I could jump up and grab hold of the fan and have its arms rotate me. Then I could feel connected to its regularity and have a nice breeze on my body.

Sweater

  I love putting on a sweater face first and being warmly hidden, while my hands search feelingly for the sleeves. It’s a brief and socially acceptable reprieve that touches on my desire for a cat’s indolent lifestyle.