Fiction

By the end of my trip to St. Thomas, I had discovered a reason to live.

When we move together in the dark I can almost get to him but I turn back.

Had he been a man, we could’ve saved his life right then and there.

Her body too, a mystery in motion. But does she own her body?

She alone knew how he could be swept up, tender interior laid bare.

Six-word stories about the the perplexities of love and desire.

If he was cheating on her, he was cheating on her paintings as well.

It never occurred to me that I was being sold too, standing inside my box. Basil was annoyed. All that training he’d given me going to waste on art? I’ve been selling cigarettes, I said, as if it were a credential.

You put his hand around your throat but he keeps moving it away.

I saw myself, and for the first time, I didn’t look away.

It seemed that someone had died, but really it was part of us.

It was to keep us impartial and to protect us from threats and bribes.

Sarah let herself be guided by her desire, inescapable and true.

I found it impossible to forget that we lived in a poor country.

The thumbnail spoke directly to the most excitable parts of himself.

“Dorm whores” his roommate calls them. They come for the booze.

The shapes called them bastard loads. The lazy creations of fools.

“In a way, it’s your fault,” he says, handing us a bag of frozen peas.

He’d reenlisted in ’64; he would not go home until the War was won.

He had dreamed of being a front-runner, someone who changed lives.

Her hips, her pelvis, broke free of concerns. His eyes hovered.

“Hey, babe,” he said, breathing into the phone like a sex maniac.

This is the worst moment of her life, maybe of anybody’s life, ever.

The most arcane sexual practices could arouse me from my torpor.

I love you to distraction, she would say. I love you beyond love.

Welcome, the place seemed to say, let’s screw with you a little more.

“Make it look like you’re working on a nearby shelf,” Aunt Mary whispered.

He’d been lost and tripping vividly on some speckled acid for days.

I try to get her to drink again. We were okay drunks, before Jesus.

The only person I’d seen naked was my mother the night she died.