Flies/Honey

So I went to this wonderful writing class, and got all this love and encouragement to write. Now I wake up and feel guilty that I am not writing. Like, in my sleep, I guess. I’m not “working,” so I should be writing between eighteen and twenty-two hours a day, right? I go have lunch […]

Asking For It

There were so many rooms in Chicago, and I was desperate to see all of them– the modern wing, the Grant Wood, all of it. I had been to the Art Institute ten years prior– I just didn’t remember anything but a room tinted blue and taking off one boot to touch my winter virgin […]

Fireflies

Told there would be a dance, I tried not to get too excited. The crowd is mostly white, and writers are pathologically tangled in their heads. Yet at the first sign of music, several white haired ladies are dancing all around like they’re at Woodstock. Then more and more folks. The DJ loves Stevie Wonder. […]

Mercredi, or Day of the Dead

Having your work critiqued is like going to a funeral. A funeral for an old person with a bad, painful cancer, where everyone’s like, “I”m glad that’s over. It’s all for the best.” I have the same need for ritual, and the same shaky desperation to affirm my own aliveness afterward. I really did have […]