People talk about heredity as if it’s linear and vertical. Dead people pass things down to the young.
Overhead, the glass envelope of the Insomnia Balloon is malfunctioning. It blinks on and off at arrhythmic intervals, making the world go gray:black, gray:black. In the distance, a knot of twisted tre...
Our mother performed in starlight.
It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.
I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs.
Even in her trances, even while possessed, my sister was very shrewd about her prospects. A fantasy would collapse like a wave against the rocks of her intelligence. Madness, as I understood it from b...
But in fact I was like Ossie, in this one regard: I was consumed by a helpless, often furious love for a ghost. Every rock on the island, every swaying tree branch or dirty dish in our house was like...
A definite hostility to being looked at, like a vampire or a vacationing Olsen
I would love to travel around the world working for a travel company taking students abroad on cultural immersion trips.
What bird are you calling?' I ask, finally, when I can't stand it any longer. The bird man stops whistling. He grins, so that I can see all his pebbly teeth. He holds out a hand to me over the broth-t...
The horses have been trying to get hold of the girl’s schoolbooks for some time. Every president wants to find out how history regards him.
Sometimes you are able to keep moving because you are not really yourself anymore. Your entire brain can shrink to one pinhead of cognition, one star in a night.
People with options feel torn. People with options feel pulled, tugged - people who can move in multiple directions. Whereas those without homes are often immobilized by illness and poverty and additi...
Now her body was the only place where the memories were preserved.
My dad's version of the book, the staid, declarative Guide to the Galaxy, is nearly identical, except that the graphics are a matte black, and the same information is listed as Fact #47. I guess that'...
Live long enough, and your life becomes your own to gamble with again
I look for my sister but it's hopeless. The goggles are all fogged up. Every fish burns lantern-bright, and I can't tell the living from the dead. It's all just blurry light, light smeared like some c...
Grammar can erect a false wall. Look at how I keep falling into this trap, writing this piece. To refer to the thousands of diverse individuals with unique histories who are sleeping on the street ton...
But until we are old ladies- a cypress age, a Sawtooth age- I will continue to link arms with her, in public, in private, in a panic of love.
At ten, I couldn’t articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well.