Hospital

“The hospital, really? No. Why are you doing this?” She shuffled after him, nose dripping and eyes feeling like pillows. Moonlight lay splayed across the gravel path.

“I love you. That’s why.” His shoulders, skinny under a ratty T-shirt, led her on. “You know that.”

She pleaded with him one more time, knowing he had set his mind. He ignored her, pulled out a cigarette and returned it to his pocket.

From over his shoulder their child looked at her with his soft, dumb, sick eyes. Even carried by a man he hardly knew, his pear-shaped face showed no fear.

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I Could Do Better Than This

Maybe we’re all struggling at our jobs and in our relationships because we let consumerism dictate the way we approach life.

That boredom at work that leads to possible-futures speculation? That inability to give one person all our love?

Both assume that what we’ve got is unchanging, that a better model exists, that the world is run by things, not processes. By conditions, not our approach.

Is life only about the obituary? Does joy come from optimizing external conditions or channeling internal passion?

We search for prefabricated solutions instead of acting like handimen: mending and improving upon what we’ve got.

Untitled

My parents split when I was too young to remember, but they still see each other off and on.

My mom has a box of pictures of them hanging out together at points throughout the years. I’ve never seen two people look so happy together.

But they never stick. They hang out for three days straight, say a long goodbye, and then don’t call each other for weeks. It’s a game of brinksmanship, each daring the other to cave.

It’s not healthy.

My dad says that my mom has always been electric. Something about her just keeps him coming back.

Aurora

Yes — it does look green.

It also looks cerulean and magenta and ultraviolet – it’s the entire god-heaven-universe soaring down onto you, YOU, just you, in an elegant blaze of soft glory and frenetic licking energy, it has pace rhythm slowness speed, staccato flashes and deep crescendos and — it looks like music sounds, when I think back and remember that night on the northwest fjords staring straight up into the 2am ether I hear a chorus and taste flavors and feel tingling because GOOD GOD it is so enveloping and sensual that your whole body reacts viscerally to those magestic swirls…