woke up at eloise's. thought i'd start my day early but even getting up at 2pm felt like an accomplishment. recently decided (again) to stop smoking weed. scapegoating it for my inability to get out of bed in the morning. black woman next to me just got off at west fourth and i slid into the end seat, into her butt warmth. can't say i don't like it. yesterday i'm not sure when i got up but the subway clock on my morning commute said 11pm. 

He hears what he hears, and most often it stings, but not long enough or strong enough to stop him from inserting the point of the needle at a 45-degree angle into his vein, bevel up.

She stands idly by forgetting what life was like before this, struggling to remember what thoughts filled her head before she was consumed with trying to save someone…

Sometimes when I am not paying attention, life happens. Through boundless tragedy and occasional triumph, I've learned to define life as more than living. Life is sick & health. Life is birth & death.  Life is bliss & agony. The most wretched, beautiful, disconcerted thing about life is that in order to see the very best of it, you have to experience the fucking worst of it.…

The only way I knew how to relieve myself of guilt was to spend every waking moment in his squalid bedroom, tearing down the walls in a fit of desperation. I didn’t know when, if, how he’d ever come home, but I wanted so badly to destroy any vestige of his former life and the murderous substance that ruled him. I flipped over his mattress with a strength born of rage only to find a yellow notepad with his testament. Be…

I had a slew of friends - we would get drunk and laugh and dance until the bars kicked us out. I had my first real job – I would show up late, leave early, and take long breaks while I sat on a grassy hill contemplating my existential dilemma. I had a husband – my college sweetheart, the natural next step, no shock, no surprise, no spontaneity.…

We worked in shifts, no more than three visitors in his bedroom at one time so as not to overwhelm him. Now it was my turn, and I was nervous and anxious and sick and it was he who broke the silence as he rasped, “It’s been too long”, to which I agreed. He struggled to eat a sandwich and two Girl Scout Cookies, yet his eyes still twinkled with an almost conspiratory look. Two days later, he died. His body was entangled in his…

When I was 7 years old, I noticed the wrapping paper “Santa Claus” had used was identical to that which my parents had chosen to wrap their gifts. Furthermore, the handwriting was also the same on both packages, and strikingly similar to my mother’s. I learned then that this magical man, this bringer-of-gifts, did not exist, and never did.  

When I…

Christine Winters made the Fulton Borough boys swoon each summer as she visited her cousin Sherry Berg, whose hairy moles and yellow snaggletooth made Christine sparkle even more. I seemed to be stuck in that pre-pubescent stage of awkwardness while Christine avoided it completely. I crushed on blue-eyed, fellow classmate Jake Williams hardcore and remember so vividly that heartbreaking night he and Christine exchanged numbers…

Addiction is perpetual. Drunkards and fiends hate to indulge alone. As long as someone is there to partake with them, it will all be OK. A father shares oxycontin with his son and feels better about himself. A brother passes a heroin needle to his sibling and things aren’t so bad. An alcoholic keeps his companion’s glass full and everything is fucking…

Two heroin addicted brothers and a father hooked on pills. I’ve dabbled but have never been able to commit, and I refuse to try heroin because, well, that’s just trashy. I don’t feel sorry for addicts. In fact, I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t a little envious of them, in control of their fate, fully aware of what awaits them. Not me, I could go any day, any time, any fashion. My destiny, in the lap of gods. 

The intangible is more lasting than the absolute.

Water evaporates. Wood rots. People expire.

But something as fragile as a thought, a feeling, a perception - that will persevere.…

Eleanor was 39-years-old - just 23 days, 16 hours, and 451 minutes shy of turning 40. She stared at an old picture of herself in her wedding…

It was one of many times that I saw 4 AM during that wildly dubious summer month. On this particular occasion, I had surprised him with my knowledge of a little known Matt Skiba/Kevin Seconds split. That is where the conversation was suspended. We dropped the seats back as far as they could go and sang out, accosting the nighttime skies with lyrics of lament. “…You blow my mind, like a colt '45 every time…” There we were - two reckless,…

Tragedy is a funny thing – your whole world comes to a halt while everyone else’s keeps moving. You’re expected to remain a functioning part of society and pick up as if nothing had ever happened, after, of course, a pre-determined bereavement period. In the corporate world, you are only allowed to grieve for 3 days, maybe less depending on whether or not the victim falls within the narrowly defined list of immediate family…

I tried to write a blurb about what romance is to me but instead was left with ruminations of what romance isn’t. Pressuring your boyfriend to propose to you because it’s been a little over two years and is the ‘natural next step’ is not romance. Buying your girlfriend red roses for Valentine’s Day then having the delivery driver call her at work for directions is not romance. Skipping foreplay and jumping…

My great-grandmother told me once as she pulled my hair tightly against my scalp, “Beauty hurts.” Fifteen years later, my feet are destroyed thanks to 4-inch heels that make me feel pretty and powerful. Have we all just become a symptom of the times we live in? What we wear is governed solely by what we think will impress or attract others. Hairy legs will make men run away, so we shoot ourselves with laser beams so that it…

Two young girls giggled maniacally as they practiced the common Western trope – the bar slide. Lemonade splashed and sloshed over the rim of the unwieldy shot glass as it made its way across the cracked linoleum surface.  The glass came to rest in one girl’s waiting hand, her cousin playfully engaged across their grandmother’s kitchen bar. She kicked the mix to the back of her throat, taking it all in with one strong gulp, and…

If someone offered to pay you $42,000 cash to sit sedentary in a white-walled box for 2100 hours over 365 days, would you accept? The catch is that you must produce or the offer is null. Every now and again you can peer longingly out of a plate of glass to the world outside; you can look but you cannot touch. The recycled air will hang tenacious and thick, the artificial light pulsing overhead as the only sounds you hear will…

Marc Rosenberg was a very wealthy business owner, loving husband and father of two. On July 31^st, 2008, he boarded East Coast Jet Flight 81 shortly after 7:10 AM. Three hours later, the Raytheon Hawker 800 tried to land, unsuccessfully, and burst into flames at the end of the runway. The Rosenberg children are now “those kids whose dad died in that plane crash”. Rosenberg’s spouse is now “the wife…