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The minute she picked up and I heard her voice, I started to cry. I tried to hide my sobs behind my hand and moved the receiver so she wouldn’t hear. When all she heard was silence, she said my name. She knew it was me, she knew the number. When I had dialed the number, the tonal beeps of each number as I pressed them evoked my tenacious sense of homesickness. Mom, I was calling my mom, crying on the phone on the floor of my apartment. A 25-year-old crying on the phone to her mother, because I just wanted to come home.

The last part of the application asked for references. I had never had a job before, and it was only making burgers. They would never call them anyway. I gave them three names…Mr. Shen Anigan, Ms. May Ham, and Ms. Kay Ahs.

Today it’s hard to be patient with other people. Someone knocked on my door late last night and woke me up, and now all I want to do is go back to bed to make up for lost time. I am having trouble being patient, and I also think I may end up being a patient…at a mental hospital. I am going crazy with no sleep.

You never mentioned you were all about the moon. You are a lumineer, a cadet, a lunar sport. You are made of stellar matter, fragments of light and energy.

Moss was starting to cover the splintering rail line, a clay rust mottling the iron and nails. The box cars bursting with prime colored graffiti held nothing else but a few mice, sprigs of alfalfa hay, and powdery dust.

I am emptying my apartment. It peels apart in layers. First I pack away the little things, the books, the coffee cups, the bobby pins on the floor. They stuff away into boxes that pile like little cities of […]

There is a little old lady who sits at the desk. She wears too much mascara and it makes her eyes bright. She cries easily, and gives hugs often. She says she can’t taste or smell anything. Coffee does not have […]

The staples pinched the puckered red skin under her eye, swollen and blue around the edges. She thought that this was the end of her run as pageant queen.

If they tried to track me down, they would find that the clues I leave behind are half-full cups of cold coffee, bobby pins, and bare footprints.

When I was 8, I had a friend who boarded shetland ponies. She would give me a leg lift and I would hop on it’s wide back, my legs dangling over each side. I’d grab onto its mane, press with my heels, and go. It’s […]