dune

he called it one of the best novels ever, so naturally I have never read it and now, twenty years down the line, I still haven't; we haven't exchanged a word in nineteen.

I bought him some other pulp for his thirteenth birthday and we left it at that.

slippery

just 30 after midnight, a stray bullet came through the window and left the woman dead in a pool of blood and broken glass for her son to find.

this was my neighborhood, this could've been my window. it could've been my mother or someone else's aunt. people left flowers behind the fence, beneath her window, and they are all mostly dried up and withered now, only the plastic the same.

I walk by, think how her window was only steps from mine, and how any night, if I walk by my window to get a glass of water, that might be me.

disgusting

my knee is old in a way that makes me wish I could pop it open with a flathead screwdriver, clean the gunk, oil the joint, pop the cap back on, good as new except for that light discoloration, old bone beige

hope

she od'd. i didn't know her well.

sometimes when you pass, people turn you into symbolism if your story is interesting enough,

like a pr campaign for the dead, as if all the people who knew you were making up for all the things you would never get to do.

throw

up,

it all away,

the ball,

yourself at him, into the job, into your work.