Are you happy? You look happy. I'm glad.

I mean, it hurts a little deep inside because it used to be me that made you happy but still, I'm glad.

You deserve to be happy. You're wonderful.

I remember that I was happy during our short time together but…

I wake up in a strange room, unsure of how I got there. I don't remember going to sleep. I feel sluggish. The walls are beige and the floor is immaculately clean white tile. I've never seen such clean tiles. I'd heard about floors so clean you could eat o…

I reach. I fumble. My fingers renew their acquaintance with that smooth black stone of yesteryear. I remember the knit cap, with Donald Duck on it, and gasp in wonder. How have you been, old friend, old chronicle, old heart? The rhetorical echoes send…

"When will you understand that I love you?" I wrote. "I know it sounds crazy and incomprehensible given the circumstances, but my heart has a mind of its own. I try to rein it in, but it keeps running away after memories of you."

"Little things, like son…

"Whoooo!" Jackie whooped into the night, swaying drunkenly to Tiffany's rendition of “I Think We're Alone Now.” Her hair was poofy and just the right amount of wild. She was young and beautiful and this bonfire was going to be the best night of her life.

…

The house on the hill looked like an aged porn star. Enough work had been done to make it superficially attractive but the closer you got, the more you could see the lived in lines of time. Knowing windows watch relentlessly and people who have stared dee…

As I turned right at the old adobe building, Carmen's voice piped up from the back seat. "Grandma, where are you going?"

I was surprised that she had noticed. Usually her head was bowed over her phone, oblivious to the world around her.

"The Iron Skille…

It's so frustrating not knowing why things are the way the are. I'm on a familiar street. I think it's my own but it's hard to tell. It looks and feels like I should know it but there is no sense of recognition. It's night time and the street is dark, alm…

I dressed as a vampire that Halloween, wearing plastic fangs that ripped at my gums and white grease paint on my face. My little sister dressed as an M&M and had to walk at a slow jog to keep up with me. My parents told me that I had to take her. I wan…

Happiness is.

Not a moment,

but collective feeling.

You can't pick it up,

unless it has a heartbeat.

You can't define it, because

it is ever-changing.

It's a feeling that comes when you close your eyes

and receive a kiss unexpectedly.

It is also a box wi…

Sad, I picture myself cutting the sugary crust with my stainless steel fork. When it cracked apart there'd be a sharp sound of metal against porcelain. The crust, dark brown seeping to deep red, is softer, gooey, nearby.

There is a ring of pineapple again…

It is indeed a special, ineffable moment when a movie director falls hopelessly in love, but when I found her, my own scene clicked into place and its unearthly beauty seized me. Such is the power that an extra can play in just that kind of crowd scene. A…

To me, she wasn't just from this place, she was the place. I met her gaze when we stood face to face, her peering up at my ball cap and sunglasses, squinting in the sun, and she smiled. Her various teeth shone in the shadow of my body, and I knew that w…

And then I saw her, the face I'd been hoping to find ever since arriving in the country. I had arrived at the airport and, walking down those stairs, I caught a scent in the air, and I knew she would be here, somewhere, probably in a crowd of people. The …