Every half hour Jim takes me and Mike out for a smoke break. I had never smoked before but seen enough to pretend. The cigarette burns my throat dry and scratchy.

Hold Edinburgh by its coastal edge and start rolling. Flatten the pathetic sliver of murky grey they call a beach, and wrestle those chip stealing seagulls into submission.

Listen closely. Never owe someone a favor. You might find yourself locked in a bathroom, clutching a half-empty bottle of wine, during an engagement party for the ex-girlfriend you haven’t seen in ten years.

… of course real sugar + actual gin is better for one than what I’ve concocted just now, just right now, which simulates a daiquiri if you close your eyes + ‘member those afternoons outside of the Mirage in Las Vegas.

This is Glassdom. 
Allow me to describe: the trees along the city’s broad boulevards, those I thought to be poplar—they are glass, as is much else.

Mona’s toenails. Let me tell you. 

I was in the shallow end of the pool with my eyes just above the water, like a soldier in a jungle-war movie, getting ready to rapid-splash Daryl, my son, who’d just cannonballed me.

Every writers’ meetup ended the same way. Some grad-school peacock in a scarf would flap his hands and say, “Let’s get ethnic food,” like he’d just caught a case of the white-liberal munchies, and we’d wind up at a Thai place. Every time.

I could have texted you or called but this is one of those hand-written kinds of moments.

Here’s the thing: I never did manage to get divorced, but my husband was never my Prince Charming. Till death do us part was the vow we made, and death just so happened to part us prematurely, meaning slightly earlier than Neil might have liked.

I scrolled through the news while my cereal softened. A war widened. A politician denied something. A celebrity apologized.

Fuchsia walls press into your back, spurring you toward the plunge. The end of a winter that has learned your name. 

I always lie when someone asks me a question. Not to be rude. It’s because if I don’t want to be a liar, the only answer I can give is I don’t know because I don’t know anything.

Almost, you sailed into my high school graduation on only hope and paper cranes. Little pastel birds clinging to the seams of your suit-shoulders and the tendrils of your rusted hair, pulling you toward me.

Oscar Mayer / “The Weinermobile Heads to Kentucky” / Regional

Most agree that the contortionists took their act too far when the troupe clung to each other’s waists, bending their limbs, tucking in their chins to form a swastika from the arrangement of their lithe, leotarded bodies.

my father drives us through the canyon on our summer road trip explaining the wondrous swirling lines that form on red rock walls from piling sediment and sand and generations of erosion

Winter’s black-and-white array of skeletal trees against snow has begun to reanimate, the first tentative buds peeking out from hardy sheaths as if fearful of making a full appearance, lest they be battered by vicious winds and other unpredictable elements.

Take one glass of wine for each of your current problems: one glass for the husband who is ‘taking time to process things’; one glass for the promotion you deserved but didn’t get because you fucked things up, and not in the interview

I don’t know why people call it a cold sweat. When I wake up with my sleep shirt plastered to my upper back, I’m steaming hot. Damn estradiol patch must’ve expired. When did I change it last?

Your name: Laurie Porter
Date: 9/24/28
Occupation: Cashier

Snow Day Badge. Discover how parenthood decimates previously fun experiences.

i know i turned it off because i remember turning it off, i remember the click, or i remember thinking about the click, which is different but not different enough to help

That summer of 1976 the bicentennial celebrations burned with fireworks and hot dogs, background to my quiet high school graduation followed by that unforgettable July 4th at the lake when I smoked weed and took a chance with my first guy

A bird-ghost dive-bombed me outside of the Tobago shopping mall, squawking that I was an imperialist, a colonizer of the old Latvian Empire

Esmerelda had a way of sucking on gumdrops then flinging them onto the wall with a straw. This particular day, she was enjoying the mosaic she was creating—dahlias and posies by a bright shining sun, a gondolier, and a Spanish tapas spread—when Mother entered, dodging a speeding green blob, to announce a certain visitor.