Temporary Resistance to Abnormal State

 [[Okay I dug up this old thing from May 2020, about 8 weeks into COVID lockdown. It is a ramble that I lost the reigns on and never finished but I thought it might be informative to get feedback on a piece that is 1) an extremely rough draft and 2) a different style from my other submissions. I never really figured out who the audience was supposed to be, so sometimes I use gamer speak and sometimes I translate. Could be fun to write a version with a glossary. But also this little guy prob lost all relevance a long time ago and has no home in this world anymore, so maybe this is just a death rattle. But it's all I've got this week so... read at your own risk / enjoy!]]

TEMPORARY RESISTANCE TO ABNORMAL STATE

In battle, character is temporarily immune to all status effects (ex. poison, slow, blindness, silence, confusion, etc.)

 

CONFESSION: Other than Super Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country series, I had absolutely zero interest in video games until my partner and I started living together a year and a half ago. At first my interests were incredibly specific -- I want good dialogue and interesting characters, I want my choices to have an impact on the story, and I don't want to feel like I am battling a machine hellbent on making me seasick as I drunk-walk through a 3D nightmare world. We started with narrative driven, queer or queer-adjacent, indie titles like Gone Home, 2064, and Life is Strange. Night in the Woods, be still my heart, rekindled my love of "JUMPING ACROSS THE SCREEN!" (otherwise known as a side-scrolling platformer) and meanwhile held my queer, adult-adjacent attention with clever, poignant storytelling and all the NPC dialogue a pal could ask for. 

 

HOWEVER. 

That jumpy bug bit me. The whole deal bit me. Sick in bed after a bizarre fainting episode last year, I played my first RPGa cloyingly sweet (the whole thing was written in RHYMING POETRY help me) E-for-Everyone game called Child of Light. At first I was confounded by the turn-based battle sequences, which produced in me an enormous amount of stress, until my honey finally convinced me that I could consider about my choices rather than my THE WORLD WILL ALL EXPLODE IF I AM NOT MASHING BUTTONS approach. The bug bit me bigger when I won the final battle (the titular character vs. a shapeshifting DRAGON) with next to no health and only one ally still standing by the end, ENTIRELY DISMANTLING my honey's expectations. "This doesn't look good, Baba. You might want to...." Of course they gave me some reasonable advice, of which I took no notice, and rather ploughed ahead on my course to TOTAL VICTORY. 

The bug had won. I was got.

Still, until recently, I felt like I had pretty specific tastes for what would actually engage my interest enough to play. Certainly I can't handle any kind of blatant racism or sexism, let alone cis-heteronormativity, and I couldn't care less about a gun or a punch. In fact, any kind of violence would make my skin crawl, and the one time I tried to play a "horror" game, I shrieked and threw the controller across the room... So that was never going to happen again. 

 

HOWEVER. 

 

You may recall that currently we, all of humanity, are attempting to survive a global shutdown due to a deadly virus, of which we know next to nothing about, full stop. Like I suspect you might be, I am fully boxed up, a sardine in its tin, stewing in its juices and growing ever stinkier. At the start of this thing, I was full of plans to "make the most of it." Or even, to attempt my flailing, artist-adjacent version of "helping." Ho ho wouldn't it be fun to post a video to the instant internet every day. Oh ho ho no it would not you could not be more wrong. 

 

So we are gonna play games. We even splurged on a second controller (aka PS4 DualShock aka that buttons thing) and purchased some games from a suspiciously timed "spring!" sale. We are gonna play some games and listen to some new music and hear some people talk on podcasts and watch some shows and try to make the best of it, and maybe even do some productive stuff with the time, why not. 

 

And then I come in there and honey says "Hey honey I downloaded a couple new games and thought you might like to check them out, and this one is free and probably bad lol but w/e we can check it out or not, it's w/e we can also just delete it, but idk, what do you wanna play honey?" I'm looking at it–you know, the menu picture, basically a VHS box cover, and it's some blonde anime lady in an armor shirt and idk i'm like, let's just see, let's just get it overwith now and then we can move onto the next one, i am genuinely curious about this multitude of new games we have to try out!

 

The beginning is not promising. Is this a phone game? we think aloud to each other. Ha look at these cheap graphics. What is this long narrated “world building” history lesson at the start, that is our least favorite thing in all of storytelling. Now I have to pick what "race" I want to be? Orc, obviously, because obviously all I want to be is someone who gets to see a giant woman, a giant woman. And so it starts with fighting and it's boring and bad but for some reason we are sticking it out because we want to see what the gameplay is like.

 

I don't know about y'all, but this is how it went for me–over a week or two, my normals were disappeared one by one, roughly in this order: public-facing job, seeing friends, seeing family, gigging job, regular check, leaving the house at all, wearing anything other than pajamas, not turning very nearly fully feral. (I mean, who wasn't at least slightly excited for that part?)

 

It's not like it came out of nowhere. I had gotten back in the habit of listening to Democracy Now! every day, which always feels very smart and politically important at first, but after awhile ends up making me feel helpless and small.

 

My anxiety was becoming unbearable. Even though I was no longer going to work, I could not shake the feeling of being constantly at risk. Every time I left the house, to walk a dog for a client, or pick up prescriptions, I spiraled into a sea of unshakeable panic. Shallow breath, tight chest, prickly skin, out of body experience of daily living. I felt like I couldn't leave the house anymore at all, not in a safe way. I was afraid for myself, but I was more afraid for everyone else–what if I've already got the bug, and I'm bringing it wherever I go? There were fewer and fewer reasons to leave the house. 

 

I never expected this outcome. I'm fully addicted to a real dumb MMORPG. What started out as a 5-minute "okay let's see what it is, have a laugh, and never think about it again" joke has turned into an all day every day habit. And I have no intention of stopping. In normal circumstances, this would be a problem for me. Then again, in normal circumstances, this wouldn't happen. But in this reality, this timeline, Caravan Stories is the only thing staving off a constant state of panic and anxiety, and I will thank the gods that I am lucky enough to have access to such silliness in my increasingly tiny world. (And increasingly embiggening on-screen world!)

the walls stay wet.

Write a piece that includes repetition in a meaningful way.

[[cheated on this one and used something i'd already written. not sure that i even edited it.]]

my honey bought a dehumidifier just for this dilemma, but the damp still clings to everything. you'd think this would be mostly a summer problem for memphis, what with the humidity and all, the heat a huge hug, all things sweating and stinking, but no. the humidity lasts year round, whether you’re sweating buckets or cold to the bone. in this lockdown box, aka our home, 1/2 of a duplex rented at a price too high for what it is but thanks gentrification, they can do that because of the zip code and even still, much cheaper than what we'd pay in any other city, though it's debatable whether memphis is a city or just a stretched out hambone, but no matter how you sing it, winter or summer, rain or shine, in this house, the walls stay wet.

our coats all mildew in the closet. the dryer spins 3 cycles per load. we stack towels along the baseboards and toss mothballs like confetti. moisture pushes nails up and out of the floorboards, snagging socks, drawing blood. doors expand into their frames, wood kissing wood sloppy till it splinters, then seals, vowing never to part. the cracks where the wind used to blow, where water rushed in when the landlord, a genius, powerhosed the porch, where the cat pressed his nose in hunting pose – these slits’ cement assures our sequester.

we certainly won’t be getting mail anymore.

honeydew, don’t be blue. if this consumes me, i will consume you.

first the food fuzzes, then calcifies, the pantry petrified. and us, old cheese, hardening into the soppiest mantras, "i don't care" and "never." not to be outdone, the faucets creak and drip incessantly, the basins overrun, so every step's a splash (but no one's having fun / life’s a gash!)

honey i can trace your footsteps along the dark indentations in the floor, how we slush and lurch toward comfort, the dream of self and temperature control. the walls stay wet. old paint cracks, flakes, falls, joining the flood and exposing ugly plaster, as we see it should. forever fixed to armchairs and countertops, beads of bright dew commune. every sodden thing reaches out, connects, spreads, like a fungal network except we have to sleep here. except it rejects us.

honeydew, reach out too, let’s let the great wetness consume me and you.

if anyone had tried to look inside, past the permanent condensation between the window panes, through the cloudy ripple where the heat rises from the vent, over the mountains of moldy linens, if you wanted to and tried, us slugs shouldn’t be hard to find. when the windows fog up for good, when we forget our circling rituals, when the air finally settles into stillness, who can say, honeydew, how long we won't last as two?

witness

Define Love. If love were an essay, how would you classify its structure? What do its beginning and ending have in common? What are its classifiable parts?

[[i guess i kind of ignored this prompt actually.]]

In the glass chapel in the autumn Ozarks, with the trees encircling our strangerness into family, you declared your love by sharing its hard birth, in the form of years-old journal entries–you stood on the shore, felt love lapping at your ankles, the pull of the waves, but withheld the ocean from yourselves. Your resistance reveals its depth.

Our two-pew crew grinning glistening, recall how we stood tall twenty years ago outside another church; in its twisted belly our young friend confined with adult addicts, told "finding freedom through Jesus Christ" would cure his "same sex attraction addiction." Lauren Henry's protest sign quoted 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, "Love is patient, love is kind." Decades later, her hand in mine at the wedding, a miracle.


When I met Brock in 2002, he was "bisexual" and this was the "progress" he'd made in "Christian" therapy.


At the reception, Tyler's relatives gave gag gifts and toasts that drooped like eulogies–all past tense in their conviction that he was doomed to burn for eternity. We did not witness the same flame.


Honest to goodness, I was surprised so many conservative family members showed up, anti-vaxxers and Mormons and all, their love expressed as presence, tight-lipped applause, a plastic pail and shovel–a memory of phantom purity, nearly knifing, "Before you made us bury you." Before the waves took the sandcastle away.


Love too brittle breaks.


Brock's dad always terrified me with his grill pit tongs and assured masculinity, judging with his god's eyes. A rigid man who knows straight his place in the world, not seeing how it bends to him. That night in the Eureka Springs Community Center, I saw him moved to bend.


Tyler's dad toasted ice and nothing. "We're glad we met this righteous family." Tried to shake heaven's men's hands over the heads of his son and new son-in-law.


Mr. Terwilleger gripped the mike and a handkerchief crumbled as his face red silent cried whole minutes before mananging, "I love you, son, and I know you love me too."


And all of us in the Eureka Springs Community Center loving your love built a new church to your love and its tough birth and its eternal fire and shoreless sea, raised a monument to acceptance even when we cannot see.

first-aid training

MACRO-EDITING
We are storytelling animals. We relive our days around the dinner table through story. We set the stage; we build suspense; we instinctively know when to shift gears; we pack in the sensory details; we build toward the inevitable conclusion. What we don't do is fret over the order of the story. We don't hit backspace. We don't overthink, and somehow everything that needs to be said gets said!

For today's prompt, let's attempt to transfer that innate storytelling ability to the page by writing a letter. Write this letter as if you were telling someone about the thing that happened to you in line at the bank (or whatever you want to talk about). How would you instinctively begin if you were telling it in person or over the phone? Let your fingers take dictation, and I bet you will manage to include every necessary component without even being conscious of it.



I got this email from Quamesha about how all the "forward-facing staff" have to get first-aid certified in case I guess someone has a heat stroke, which has happened apparently, or like falls down the stairs, which I'm always worrying is about to happen on those narrow stairs–did you know that building is from like 1870-something? It's the last one left from the original marine hospital, well plus there's a little one behind that apartment building, where they used to do laundry i think.
You know before the hospital, it was Fort Pickering and that was a fort but eventually became its own town, separate from Memphis, and it went all the way to Beale Street! And obviously before that the Chickasaw or maybe Cherokee lived there, apparently there's a dispute about it between the tribes, which is supposedly why we don't have a land acknowledgement in our history brochure, at least that's what Brooke told me and I half believe her. She used to work at Chucalissa, which would've been like a suburb compared to the land with the ceremonial mounds where the museum is now. And one time someone visited and pointed to Brooke and asked "Is she real?" aka they were asking if she was indigenous but what a weird way to do that. We gotta get our shit together. Whiteys i mean. I know i know.
So I had to do this virtual CPR training and now I feel like I need to buy first-aid kits for everyone I know. What if we have a kitchen accident! Or the ceiling falls in! I guess I am supposed to know CPR now but we don't even have a tourniquet for fucks sake how am i gonna stop any kind of "life threatening bleeding" which is the same as half a can of soda?? Yes, this much!
But the in-person part of the training got cancelled so I guess I'm still not technically certified but I did take a lot of notes and I feel like I should get credit anyway. Plus I had already decided I wasn't gonna put my mouth on that dummy.

body story

What is it like to live inside your skin? Do you avoid mirrors or look forward to your reflection in every storefront you pass? Do you live with pain? Do you bite your fingernails? Do you have a curve you admire? A Romanesque nose? A frog in your throat? As you consider today's prompt, try not to describe your body as an outside observer: I am 5 ft. 2 inches, etc. Rather, concentrate on one aspect of your body and write about it as if it gave you the exclusive rights to tell its story.



As a kid I loved folding myself into cupboards and under tables.* It all went wrong in 1997. I had slithered under my bed, whether to hide or just relax I can't remember, but next to the missing socks and plastic figurines, I lay on my stomach and experienced a sickly new soreness that drove me to standing, to sleeping on my back.
Sarah Lipski got them first. Mostly I wore baggy clothes so I escaped notice until Mark Jones' end of the year pool party. Why did I choose a bikini? At a sleepover, when I started changing into pajamas, Lauren Dunn screamed, turned, and hid her face.
My high school friends loved lingerie shopping and removing shirts at every opportunity. I found safety in their silliness. Laylee pressed me to a corner in the school hallway, squeezing, "You're not wearing a bra today!" I loved this attention.
But in almost all other contexts - cut them off. In my way. Decades spent flip flopping between baggy/binding "don't see" and braless challenge "fuck you."
I picked up the cat unprepared, he clambers up my shoulder to jump to a chair. I look down at the thin pink line puffing up on my skin. Ellie rushes for the neosporin. "My perfect titty!" Softest skin.
A far cry from too big, too saggy, too uneven, too pale, too strange,** unwieldy annoyance. We've come a long way together, but most of the time they're still too much.
At work I want them flat but it's hard to find a good buttondown without "boob gap." I still get ma'amed but that's not their fault.
I wonder, if I didn't have them, what my softest spot would be.


* I still love it, but it's harder now.
** I was born with a rare genetic condition that results in, amongst other things, whorled birthmarks.

the choice

Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art" could be interpreted as a call to take up our pens in order to gain control over the 'disasters' in our lives. Write it to right it, in other words. But I also find meaning in the opening line: "Lose something every day". Considered in tandem with Hemingway's ghostly remnants, this proclamation could become a mantra for writers. Is there something in your work that would be better felt as a reverberation than the cymbal itself? Is there a shadow waiting to emerge? Or perhaps you might approach a new scene by defining what it is (was) not. It was not spring. It was not love. Not an e.e. cummings' poem. etc.

Writing is a permanent road trip, one that does not include GPS. We will inevitably get lost before we find our way. Read Ms. Bishop's poem, and either a.) lose something from a piece of writing, showing us the 'before' and 'after', or b.) write something that approaches/defines a moment in terms of what it was not.



You might already think you know exactly what you'd do, if the choice came to you. You may even have a speech prepared. "I'm supportive, but I would never do it myself." You assure your friends that you have The Right Opinion on this matter. Right Side of History, hmm, sha sha.


Today, expecting certainty, touting your Right Opinions about what Those People do, you cannot imagine yourself among them. Why not?


But, just roll with me for a moment here, say you find yourself in just such a situation – the choice. You're forgetting that you'll be in shock. "This wasn't supposed to happen!" You're caught unprepared. You'll be forced to consider your family, your finances, your health, your future. And taking all this into account, what choice do you really have?


When you come to accept that you must join their ranks of Those People who Do That, you'll be outraged by the obstacles: the red tape, the tests, the money, the waiting. "I can't believe this is such a mess!" You'll moan to a friend over manicures, but she still has the Right Opinion and little need to listen.


No one warns you how to be in your body in those weeks, how to carry the pain along with the knowing.


It might not even hurt.


It might be just like getting a haircut. Shed what weighs you down and emerge refreshed, a whole new you!



Anyone can try it!

hungry scene

Consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as you approach today's prompt. We spend most of our time eating, drinking, sleeping, etc., but often we forget to include these seemingly mundane activities into our writing. When these needs are not met, we can't achieve all of the lofty things to which our great minds aspire. Go back into a piece you've been working on, and re-see it to include some bodily functions. Or create a new scene that centers on a meal or the absence of a meal. What does hunger feel like? Or cleanliness? Thirst?



No one else diagnosed it trauma, but you knew from its numbness - the ice water shock state that left you inert in the sterile twin bed. You forgot hunger, desire, love - all eclipsed by fear - is he here?

“You know, they won’t let you out unless you eat something.”

Well I didn’t know. Treatment happens at and around you, never with or through. Livid, lose the long days layed out in unrest. Someone reminds you to bathe, offers soft fresh cotton and yes standing under water brought you back to yourself, a bit. (Though admit it, you loved hairy pit stink skulking to the wall installed phone to take a call from Mama and swinging filthy feet at phantoms in the night.)

The meds you fought kicked in finally and swung you back to yourself so hard, you whiplashed out the other side as someone you’d never met - someone brave and wanting. Meanwhile, the nutritionist prescribed Vitamin D and Ensure and you’re so full of chocolate corn syrup you don’t even mind not sleeping. The halls and machines take shape out of what was permanent fuzz, a bleary blindness layered over living that serves to separate You from your present state, a fog that thickened over years, protection from violence that wouldn’t go away. And you too stayed.

Now knee jerk restless nights and you can’t stop looking toward the window, just in case. What if…? The door opens every fifteen minutes and they’ll mark on your chart that you’re asleep unless you wave. Hunger claws up with visions of a stage, the sharp cramp reminds you it’s hard to be brave.

snapdragons discover each other

WEEK 5 – REVIEW REMIX REVISE
Write your autobiography (not memoir but the entire story of your life) on one page, in ten minutes. Seriously, set a timer.

What are you surprised you left out? What are you glad you left out? What frightens you? Now, pick one detail from the original piece, and let it be the point of departure for a second draft of the same length.



Once the clouds came, I could not see my way out from under them. Maybe they'd been gathering all along, but at 13 dark shapes blocked the sky entirely, and 16 raged full hurricane. By then at least I'd found kindred spirits to weather the storm with. Outsiders called us "the emo kids," sensing some of our emotional intensity, but not understanding our shared sensuality, vulnerability, sensitivity, queerness. I put my every everloving egg in this friend basket, a wreck without it. Sometimes I even shattered in the safety of the nest – hiding in the closet with the cat box at my costume party. But when we were good? No lunch table laughed louder. Underwear dance parties, rolling down golf course hills, making music + movies, cigars at the diner, a home in every park + parking lot. No romance ever punctured the sanctity of our circle, and we prided ourselves on silliness in sobriety. Key word "sincerity." We found each other in the fortress of a public institution, improbably, when many of us were at our lowest. All our eggs riding in that collective basket. Nested my confidence + capability atop them, our strength woven into a community. (I'd argue this was our queerest characteristic at the time.) And even knowing all this, the immense love and shared support between us "snapdragons," I never realized how lost I'd be without it.

part one of the above assignment

~This is how we do it!~ 

Memphis mud raised your blistered body little mammal. They sorted you out a sister, these stupid hobbitses, the sweetest kinds. Take them under the table. Grumpy from the start, curious of letters + making nonsense of sense. Circle the family of colors. School, a disaster. Friends turned populuar while you mudlark wandered tree bark scars. When the clouds came, you could not see a way from out under them. The dismal grey stretched forever, school a prison, teachers torture – truly did feel this extreme, poor thing. Not much to compare it to. When you "finally" found friends you pulled them tight to you, maybe scary in your wanting. Only knowing all or nothing. Prided yrself on sober fun but New Orleans didn't let that last, sometimes you think it all got lost, left like Mardi Gras trash in the street – but try to make it beads in trees, gleaming plastic. You were still learning, the booze did take you down some strange streets. You wonder how you stayed alive – unknown magic + clown gods carry you through – but why? What awaits? You survived confused consent + not knowing you could say no. Flower petal scarred. Bloom sideways softly into queerness finally find the words, the love. Get the labels you deserve. Diagnosis, partnership, community. Crawl back to the mud, hush puppy, dirt dobber, swell onto the shore. See the world worth fighting for. Look toward the So Much More.

bless the decomposers

River Teeth Journal accepts submissions for a weekly column called "Beautiful Things." It asks for flash CNF, 250 words or less. Here is a sample: What I Made

Feel free to visit their archives and review the types of work they've published, then write your own potential submission to the "Beautiful Things" column.




To hear Lula Mae tell it, you'd think that old wood shack sat near paradise, rather'n some backwoods holler. Now this would've been before a kitchen fire took that old house like tinder. They hardly got out the door with their britches and Grandma Janie's portrait.

Even before all that, there weren't much to it, other'n a shack to sleep in and a crick to spit in. Tough times yield tough folk, they say, but sure did have the nicest damn outhouse in all Brantley County– corn cobs and sears-roebuck catalog right up there by the seat. Lula Mae swears those amenities meant the Jacobs never had trouble with hemmorhoids– even their assholes were tough. And if that weren't enough, God sent dung beetles. What a blessing for someone else to do the dirty work! Lula never spent a day turning the latrine, thanks to those bugs carrying off what we can't keep in. In fact, she sat on that throne, just smelling the partridgeberry, till somebody caught her and set her back to chores. Least that's how Lula Mae tells it.

Well, I'll be! Almost makes you miss somethin you never knew you had a want for.

I'd rather be on tour - open/closed

After reading about open and closed texts, write two versions of the same moment/emotion/memory. The first version should be a closed text: the characters are placed in concrete settings with concrete circumstances surrounding their existence. The second version should be an open text: the characters and their settings are abstract (be sure to read the examples provided in Cunningham's essay). Language will be the distinguishing factor in these pieces, where the open texts invite lyricism and the closed texts embrace clarity.



petalled out the bayou loaded down with oversize eyes blazed up with whisky cigarettes and hope. how could we not. we could not not. tied together time again toppled over tricksy grin rough cheek touch chin when whispers teach lips how to bend.

glow west spun clown, spell pan's peter to prairie stars, four score lightnings, hit high bars. come quake awhile mischief moon pull cards swoon whisky fool drop to marsh bed know thy sting, uncrumple toward my shoes and feet.

swell baby say's not morning, never not night, don't shrug me onto cali tides- trade forest kiss for memory misplaced, how hard i hid from day. onion mouth swim south bayou-bound sweet fae we caught vision gleaming sparked it up in flames.

When I took the gig in California, I brought Tom with me. Just for the ride. I'd never been further west than Dallas and that was a middle school (i.e. miserable) band trip. Turned out Tom wanted to catch up with friends out that way, so we made a two week road trip out of it. When I arrived in New Orleans to collect him, I slipped into step with my Aquarius twin, and we abruptly turned nocturnal.


We missed the Tumbleweeds on St. Claude's but Sam gave us their album anyway and we played it through 5 states. Staying with friends saved money for alcohol, decadence. We were not good house guests.


We reluctantly rolled into Humboldt on my birthday, 6 days before his. I didn't want him to leave, I didn't want to stay. Any time I'm on the road, I want to live there–the brightness, the immediacy–the precious hours of moored friendships. But this time, whether in spite or because of the excess, especially so. He felt magic.


Don’t leave.


Our closing night playing invulerable intimate might stand in for the whole trip: we got beer and burgers at the local pub, shot pool, made out, found a liquor store, attempted to find the ocean, waded into a marsh in the rain and Tom had to slap my face to keep me from sleeping in the muck. We probably shared a bed one last time but I was too drunk to remember.


Looking back it's clear–half that magic was mine.

to start the work of unlearning is to see the cycle

WEEK 4 - Stretching our limits must begin with where we draw the line. What details are you leaving out? What observations or thoughts are you withholding for fear of appearing unlikable? Today's prompt offers two options: 1. Go back into the previous weeks' prompts and rewrite a response to include the detail that frightens you. 2. Write the scene you believe your family or significant other would least like to read. The goal is not to create shock value nor to feel pressured into picking open an emotional scab. Simply let yourself be round and full and fantastically human.

"What the fuck is wrong with everyone!! These fucking brights!" I growl into the glare behind a stoplight.

"Honey, they probably don't know how to turn them off." Jerel's voice a balm to my burn. The coolness makes me squirm.

"Well someone needs to tell them!!! It's ridiculous." I flash my brights back at them, frantic, useless.

"They don't know what that means, it's probably stressing them out. And it's not helping anybody to get so angry about something you have no control over."

"I'm not angry! I'm just annoyed." My toes curl as I lean into the steering wheel. Pulse against the tension. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. 

"Okay, you're upset. If anything, focusing on other people instead of on your own driving makes everyone less safe." They've withered somehow in the passenger seat, a thousand miles away. 

My softest sweetest one. I've erased the hope of safety, what else have I shattered?  

Remember how you suffocated your fear, tried to magic it into excitement and pride when Chris would blitz the 695, blast off east coast needle roads, this very same vehicle, but you in the passenger seat–cringing, calcifying–absorbing, uncovering. 

You'll bleed and bleat "toxicity" "insecurity" and "men" but can't unswallow all you drank. He may have punched the wall, but it was you who pushed the table, toppled bottles off the trailer deck, threatened the tulsi and thyme. 

Even now you blame this man when you know full well you practiced all along. Slam the door, dishwasher rack rattle, stomp and shake. 

You stare straight the halos of approaching light, forcing the worse worst. Seeth small. Simmer. Settler. You wear whiteness, wield it as your white hatchback, allowed to curse at cops, colonizer. Pave the road to meet you, expect doors to open and lights to shine correctly and when they don't? 

What might have been relief (how Ellie reads this little bicker "anger" when you aren't even screaming, maybe you could even turn that story true) collapses into horror that they knew its size before you let yourself see–the source, the cycle–learned supremacy.

the good dentist

At this point in the week, hopefully your brain has been good and fooled into thinking you have abandoned the writing ship in favor of loftier pursuits, which means it's time to get serious. If you've been stuck on a piece of writing you started a month ago or last year or in a previous decade, it probably means a.) You are married to some portion of it you fell in love with the moment the words left your fingertips, but now you can't stand to look at it. You want to make it work, but in the words of Janis Joplin, "Honey, deep down in your heart you know it ain't right." b.) You are writing about something that isn't true enough yet. You are avoiding the thing that will make it true, and up until now, you haven't been able to talk about it, let alone write about it. c.) The story you are telling is not fully in your possession; research is needed to add credibility to the subject.

Open the file of an old, unfinished draft, and come at it from a new angle. Consider a different point of view. Be liberal with the delete key. Don't hesitate to dive into the deep end or to make a phone call to confirm expert details. Writers know that the real magic happens in revision, and you are a writer. You are a writer. Say it with me...



“It’s 99 degrees, but feels like 106 out there!” My dentist starts things casual.



“Can you turn toward me? That’s perfect.” In his chair, everything I do is perfect. I don’t know what he looks like under the blue face mask, but his young eyes are kind and his gloved hands are gentle. I want to have sex with my dentist.



I point to my aching molar. “Yeah, you’re riding it pretty hard.” He warns me before he inserts the needle. He explains everything as he does it, thoroughly, carefully. “Let me know if this is painful, and we’ll stop.” My dentist would never hurt me.



Every minute or so, he eases up to let me rest my jaw. I’ve never known a man who offered that. Most move harder. But my dentist says, “We can go as slow as you need to.”



He offers me a foam cushion, meant to help me stay in position longer. “Some people like it; some people don’t.” He sees my hesitation. “Okay, let’s try without it.” We try without it, and stop each time I need a break. My dentist is infinitely patient.



Later, he brings it up again, shows it to me–a soft tan block. I don't love the look of it, but why not try? I can be kinky. Once it’s in position, I instantly hate it. I don’t have to speak, just shake my head. He apologizes and it's gone for good. Unlike former partners, he won't ask me to contort around his desire. My dentist is sensitive to my needs.



I wait for the familiar pressure of the drill. “Is this okay?” My dentist will fill my every cavity and I will become whole again.

letter to the editor

Read the editorial page of your local newspaper. Find something to agree or disagree with, and spend your lunch hour writing a letter to the editor about your informed and passionate opinion. Again, this is not really a writing exercise, per se, but an opportunity to exercise your civic rights and participate in public discourse.



I request that your news organization immediately begin a PSA campaign concerning a matter of utmost importance. Your recent "Stop Buying Massive Trucks" editorial missed a key component in the battle for our city streets–people need to turn off their brights. You need to tell everybody to turn off their brights, especially those luxury trucks. Why not hire Big Ass Truck to compose a jingle? If they sang "Everybody please switch off your brights!" I'm sure people would get the message. And for BAT's next reunion show, they can change their band name to something more reasonable.


While there are countless reasons to support this cause, I will only share the top three, as I'm sure you have important barbecue reviews to write.
Light pollution harms the local fauna. Surely you've noticed the lightning bug population shrinking. I think it's bad for bats too. Anything nocturnal probably hates it when people drive with their brights on.
Nobody needs to use brights unless they're illegally driving with a busted headlight and/or MLGW failed to address another streetlight outage. If you made it to the depths of the suburbs, maybe you can turn them on. But in town? No.
It hurts my eyes and I hate going out at night now. My parents won't drive after dark anymore either, so I have to do it for them. I can't see with all these brights in my eyes, y'all. I'm driving here!

My partner assures me that most people don't know they're turned on. And I calmly respond, "Well obviously that's why I'm siginalling them!" as I rapidly flash my headlights into oncoming traffic. My partner believes people don't know that either. Well then what DO people know?!


I look forward to next week's editorial and prime time radio ad please and thank you.

lost thought trails

Well this morning, i spent an embarrassingly long time debating whether to start a Patreon or Ko-fi or something, and i still haven't come to any conclusions except for that maybe my anxiety meds aren't very effective.

Last week an anvil of a thought dropped on me–heavy, sudden, impossible. "What if I wrote about Marianne?" I wondered out of absolutely nowhere. And just now, I lost an hour plodding through why I should or shouldn't write about Marianne before I realized i didn't want to share all those reasons with y'all, and encouraging responses would only make the decision more difficult. So maybe I'll work up to giving it a shot and seeing how that feels... But i'm not there yet.

I don't want to go into work on Friday but it'll be nice to have the extra green beans. My birthday is Sunday and I don't want to see anyone. Or I've convinced myself that I don't want to because I don't know how we'd do it safely and ethically. I'm having weird feelings remembering a road trip I was on exactly 10 years ago.

Now I'm hungry and writing is a great way to procrastinate cooking.

Just kidding, trying to write while hungry is a great way to get absolutely nothing done.

I'm overthinking this. It's sorta funny how suddenly there's nothing to say, as soon as the prompt is as simple as "say anything."

Honestly I'm still stuck on reliving that road trip. It's...trippy. How Tom and I were so close, two Aquariuses at home in our season even as we bumbled across the country. We drank too much and became nocturnal, but that only heightened our bond, its magic. It's still crushing, how easily we let that bubble burst.

lament of ineloquence

If you are anything like me, you devote a solid portion of every week to thinking about assorted family members. They are always in your head, and haven't you been bringing them up at the dinner table? Let your fingers take dictation and type the gripes or anecdotes while you talk. Since you're at the computer anyway, segue into a memory and rewrite (revise) it. Change the season of the event. Create a new climax. Let it unfold into a new and desirable outcome or vice versa. The idea is to imagine the answer to "What If?" Set the stage using scene and exposition, and after you've rewritten your past, include your present feelings about the alteration.

"What did you think of the song?" 

After moving back home post-breakdown, I rejoined my old theatre troupe, and with a new lease on life, I'd grown temporarily fearless. No one asked me to do this, but I wrote an a capella lament for the finale of the show, a retelling of Hamlet with Trumpism as its source of tragedy. 

"Well... it was pretty repetitive." 

Take my ashes / Take my ashes

Thanks, Mom. "I guess I was trying to express being at rock bottom. You know, when you're so low you can only feel that one thing? Haven't you ever felt disenfranchised?" 

Did you think you had a voice? / No one can hear you, no one can see you 

Dad looks blank. Of course not, culture has curled around his desires–everyone a Marvel fan. 

Did you think you had a choice? / You've been bought, you've been sold 

I'm lucky to have parents who love and accept me unconditionally. So why is it impossible to share?

This is the part where you give up

This time, you find how to say what you mean–not in lyrics, but now, on the couch. They turn off their screens to listen, attentive, without wearing their skeptical eyebrows. Steady breath, not impatient sighs.

By the end of your speech, peppered with their thoughtful questions, you have successfully conveyed generational mental unwellness as a condition of capitalism and climate crisis, the consequences of liberalism, queer time theory, and how every superhero movie is a cop movie. Maybe they won't, or can't, agree entirely. But through their love, they make every effort to understand, and if, and when, they don't, they lift you higher because they know you have to tell these stories, and they know there's someone who needs to hear.  

If only. 

awaken the crepusculator!

Before bed, spend a few minutes thinking about your morning routine. Then, close your eyes and imagine how you might weave elements of the fantastic into the chronology. Be sure to make notes on your imaginings before you fall asleep, and don't forget to share your final results...



when the last light flickers shut, the scent of cedar candle turns the loudest thing in the bedroom. tomorrow has to come again, so wake me up in the woods.

when a sip of sun spills over the trees, i'll still not want it. nuzzle further into the pillow pile of my soft siblings as they're yawning into consciousness, as it dawns on them, day/light. their hunger rumbles them toward mama bear, though weaned means tracing her lead to the river, the out of bounds, the beyond the cave mouth, unknown. how could anyone be ready to go?

what i know is dark, cold, i have not needed day.
though i am loath to leave my hole, my kindred will not wait.

touch your paw pad to the dewy dirt.
let's give that a minute to take.

i come crepuscular.

now– assured, surround the careless air, become covered in the hum of honeybees, notice how your gait changes when the light and leaves conspire to gift you with a dappled coat–how you feel now your fur is armor.

the sleuth of us all lumber long the river bank river bed disarming doe commandeer their roughage acorns clover clean canines fell beehives wink sleepy chuff ready den bound bear family, all of us me.

in my short leg curvy fit black skinny jeans and button down, mr rogers sweater, medicine worn and written and swallowed, with my paper water wallet phone keys mask LUNCH, ready to do day, i say ursula lead the way.

restaurant review

"..if you can't make something out of a little experience, you won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not be merged in it." ~Flannery O'Connor

We need not feel limited by geography nor our financial ability to accumulate passport stamps. If you've eaten a meal at a restaurant recently, you've earned an experience. The same is true of your healthcare and consumer experiences. For today's prompt, review an experience you've had in which the service was remarkable (good or bad). Imagine this less as a Travelocity review and more as an expert critique that might appear in a newspaper or magazine.



In times like these, when we must abstain from feasting at our favorite restaurants, we must bring the fine dining to us. Yesterday I had the pleasure of "calling in" and "picking up" from one of the most well-established establishments on Overton Square.


As I waited in the Curbside Pickup Lane, "10 minutes only," I had the opportunity to observe a photographer in her natural habitat, willing any kind of inspiration to appear in her subject's head shot - apart the turquoise wall of her backdrop of choice, the dreary suit's LinkedIn profile would be identical to the next. Cringe.



Before I knew it, the graceful and talented Vanessa appeared, heaving a large bag and two plastic cups through my passenger seat's window, just as I managed to clear all the paper off the seat. Although I cannot see her smile, I perceive it twinkling behind her mask. Ah, the service of an angel. "Y'all have a great day!" Alone again, I lingered a moment to absorb the bouquet of greasy aromas pouring into every crevice (and immediately escaping through the ineffective sun roof) of my chariot.



Once back home, I had the pleasure of spreading my delectable spread across the coffee table, whilst only knocking over one or two of the tchotchkes that reside there. As I folded into the deep, fraying cushions of my sofa and tucked into my banquet, I had the presence of mind to remind Dr. G. Willikers of his place at the table. "Get offa there, Willie!"


Before I could comprehend what had transpired, I found myself clutching the dripping remains of my Beyond-veggie-burger-with-avocado-and-roasted-garlic-aioli. The bun in tatters, my fingers soused, garments dappled, it finally dawned on me how this enterprise earned the moniker "Belly Acres." I highly recommend the peanut-butter-milkshake.

overtime in ATX

....Think about the jobs you've held over your lifetime. Which one would you want to pull back the curtain to show us what's going on backstage? Set the scene and give a little background information (research) on the industry via exposition.



I'm not a morning person. My best-friend-turned-coworker Laylee usually arrives first, and I stay late, after she's caught the bus. But today is my morning. Laylee warned me, but how bad could it be?


Well, it's bad. I left Hercules out overnight, hoping he'd catch the rats that keep chewing the food bins. He may have had... too much fun. There's spilled kibble everywhere and tufts of hair from apparent scuffles. Somehow (mystery of the day) room 3's door unlatched, so "The Frat House" boys tracked litter mud across the floor's chipped paint.


Aaaaand there's rat turds on the printer. Again. Thanks for nothing, Hercules. Your hero's name does not suit.


When it's time to open, I've only managed to scoop about 1/3 of the ~75 litter boxes in the cattery, and I haven't even gotten to ISO yet. Sandy and Qalla are on ringworm watch, so they have to quarantine, and I'll have to spray myself with bleach after interacting with them, to kill any potential fungal spores. I can't leave the cattery unattended, but I know without looking that they've made a mess.


Visitors start to trickle in. Plastering on my biggest smile, I give my practiced speil to two UT students. "Welcome to the cattery! You're welcome to visit with any of the kitties, but please read all the signs, and sanitize your hands between cats so we can keep everyone healthy."


I want adopters to see personalities before judging, so I casually mention, "There are more adoptable cats in two other buildings, so you may want to visit the FeLVies first." Cats with feline leukemia2 are susceptible to illness, and I don't want to spread URI because, wouldn't you know it, everyone and their cousin caught the sniffles this week. There's always something going around in here. But visitors will consider the residents of the Ringworm Ward and FeLVieland "sick" without even taking the time to meet them.


But these two aren't adopters. I already know the question about to rocket out this sorority girl's mouth."Do you have any KEH-ENS?" My teeth clenched inside an exhausted smile, I lead them to the wrestling mass of kittens in the last group room (yes we DO hide them on purpose) who immediately begin to scale my threadbare jeans. Yowch. Keep smiling. I leave them to it, their coos following me back to my scooper. The day has only just begun.

tuesday 2 galloped off without me

Instead of surfing or scrolling, journal while you wait to have a cavity filled or for your stepson to file out of the locker room. Don't think too hard about what you want to write; just put words on the page. Find a point of departure in your surroundings (the shadow of a tree branch, a whiff of burning wood) and follow the stream of consciousness to its conclusion.

It's been a long time since I said it out loud, so I can't remember if I told you. Light shines through me and I don't feel the rain. Things that go bump in the night? I am one. I can squeeze a scream out of any body. "What IS that thing?!" Shifting shimmer, ghoulie glimmer. Can't pin down what you can't catch. Touch. Look beyond the outline, the person-shape show, what is found there? (I can't tell you. Either you don't, or you know.) 

LISTEN hear a howling see me scowling and you think I'm hear to haunt you when I offer you a piece, just a morsel, just a crumb of what brought me to the brink – I'm the one who's haunted, can't unsee what I have seen, can't erase the knowledge that to believe is to perceive. And don't you find it frightening if you ever stop to think that if we built it, we can break it, we can all rewrite the scene: won't sell our labor if you treat us like we're cogs in the machine.

OKAY so it's cliche, rhymes are crimes, but here's the thing– when you're haunted + you know it, you'll try anything to reach the ears + move the feels of everyone you meet. so remember: dusky shadows, muffled moaning, that door too slowly creaks open on its accord were all messages from me–soft reminders to lose yr blinders and remember what you see is just a fraction of a world trapped by rigidity. But if you want it bad enough, it doesn't have to be.  Imagine you're beyond all this, that you finally get free to do just what you want to do and be a ghost like me!