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Dreams
Sunbeams
January 2022A memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Fifteen Strokes Of Luck
The first was that I was no longer in pain; I could sleep. / The second was that I was finally able to love: all my life I had been more or less shut. / The third was that I lived near a pond. Watching the mallards dunk made me laugh. I was happy looking at dragonflies and even their empty exoskeletons, their shells shaking a little in the wind.
October 2021My Mother Is A Peaceful Ghost
In my dreams my mother keeps walking out of the kitchen singing, / You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. / She never sings past the first verse.
April 2021Mark On The Cross
MARK HOHN, a handwritten sign said. DEC. 19, 2013. 17 YRS. Here’s what struck me like a bus. It happened to be Dec. 19. He’d died exactly two years earlier. I sat on the ground before the cross and told myself to pay attention, that this was no coincidence.
March 2020
Sleep Study
I wake at 2:34 AM and lie in bed staring at the ceiling for a couple of hours, beating myself up for having awakened way before it’s time to get up.
October 2019
Stolen Time
Blind luck put me on this yard where the men have decided to make good use of the empty time forced upon us by the state. Yard A is downright peaceful, nothing like the prison yards where racist convicts stab and assault people.
September 2019
Handy Tips On How To Behave At The Death Of The World
Eschew blandness. Eschew causing others pain. We are all the target so wear bright colors and dance with those you love.
March 2019
The Other, Invented Man
For many years — the majority of my life, in fact — acknowledging death’s inevitability exerted little psychological pressure on me. I had no fear of passing, as they say, from this world into the next, or, assuming no next world exists, simply entering oblivion.
December 2018
V.I.P. Tutoring
For a term paper I demanded a Louis Vuitton purse. For a take-home midterm, a Tiffany bracelet.
July 2018
Willie
No one in prison is ever coming back. Once we’ve served our time, everything is finally going to work out. We’re all going to stay in touch, so we can share our good news — except I’ve been giving out a fake phone number this entire time. I’m embarrassed to know these men, eyewitnesses to a shameful period of my life I can’t wait to live down: two years in prison for a nonviolent offense.
July 2017
