The fire came back, and I can feel it tensing in my bones, running ripples down my spine. I need to burn, to feel the edge of pain pressing against a threshold, to breathe into it and through it, to know that fear and burn through to acceptance. It’s potent, visceral; I can burn anywhere… Continue reading The Fire Came Back
Category: Creative Non-Fiction
If This Were Chess, Would We Ever Reach Checkmate?
I get on these music kicks sometimes. It’s usually some ridiculous pop-esque song that’s annoyingly catchy and not really representative of how I live my life, but tangentially hits on something that resonates deeply within me. Past incarnations of this have included The Killers, “When You Were Young,” (we’re burning down the highway skyline on… Continue reading If This Were Chess, Would We Ever Reach Checkmate?
Lying to a Junkie
The payment screen on the metro card machine instructs me to dip my ATM card. Dip, like a child testing the temperature of water with their foot, invoking a deceptive smoothness to the instruction. My movements are anything but fluid and gentle. I shift my oversized camping backpack awkwardly, trying to reach for my wallet… Continue reading Lying to a Junkie
Unclench
Prelude: The bathroom, January, 2015 My partner and I smoke in the bathroom during the winter. There are tricks to keeping the stale scent under control, but after a few weeks, we stop blowing smoke through the dryer filter and don't care whether the shower is on or not, and the towel is only haphazardly… Continue reading Unclench
Smokey’s
The name was a misnomer, leftover from a time when dingy, back-alley Southern bars gave you a contact buzz if you passed too close to the open door. In downtown Asheville, the old gay bar memorialized a generation of memories, the walls still infused with fifty years of tobacco stains and the lonely pickup lines… Continue reading Smokey’s
Weekend Dreamers
In the brisk autumn air along the tourist strip, we sat outside the Champagne Bar celebrating Sarah's thirty-something birthday-I found myself wondering if they'd given her a free bottle of champagne even though her birthday wasn't until Sunday but I had never met a person who could refuse Sarah what she wanted-and as I sat… Continue reading Weekend Dreamers
From “Partitions”
This is from a much longer piece that I was working on (and never finished), but the introduction holds a certain stylistic grace that I am proud of, so I thought I would put it up- and perhaps, inspire myself to finally finish the longer piece, perhaps. Partitions of Self Introduction In the beginning, it… Continue reading From “Partitions”
Singularities of Self
Opening my eyes to New Orleans, I gorge my senses on the grit of this pulsing, unapologetic city, immersed in an explosion of oft-neglected colors. Fuchsia, cerulean, crimson, plum, and jacinthe coat the crumbling buildings lining the sidewalks of the French Quarter. Amaranthine banana blooms hang suspended from branches, furled like massive cocoons just beyond… Continue reading Singularities of Self
Yearn
We have passed down the bloody inheritance of a nation buried stifled gagging on hope without action, watching with apathy for the apotheosis of man, drawing nonexistent lines between darkness and light for the ones who conquer to create the world in their image and live, domesticated, docile for children defiant ignorant soporific, protesters who… Continue reading Yearn
Veritas
Our entire lives are built on the muddy quicksand of illustrious assumptions that bind us together in this invisible asylum. Veritas, we have written in the wrought-iron gates of our fantasy illusions, christening our lies as the absolute truth that fits like a ball gag, pressing back against our clenched teeth and muffling our unwitting… Continue reading Veritas
Monomaniacism 