Six months into our seven year relationship, I had to break up with B and send him back to Kansas. The whole spectacle was like some 90s hair band love ballad video. The bipolar drive to the bus station, B’s arms flailing in the air like some Evangelist, begging me to let him stay. That […]
Tag / Grief
Saying the Names
I remember John Flanagan. He had a head of red hair and a mouth full of over-sized teeth that seemed to get even bigger if you stared long enough. Despite the can of Bulmer’s in his hand, he was just a kid. That night, the only night I would ever be in his presence, he […]
Grief’s Interruption
For Amy I’m driving my minivan down the street, my three fatherless daughters buckled in their seats. We are almost home and the DVD they were watching is over. I switch to the radio and Unchained Melody is playing. B has been dead for over two months. Suddenly I feel as if I am in […]
The Peak of Crazy
The sun rose above the night’s chaos on the third day of a meth bender. B and I had listened to every CD we owned prior to playing frisbee with them. My usually neat writing room seemed evidence of a natural disaster, all paintings and poems created in previous days destroyed by slashing and crumbling. […]
Death’s Interruption
“You have to write yourself out of this. Quit creating new chapters and write the ones you have,” my psychologist Mike said last September, sitting in his fancy doctor office, a step up from the dusty classroom-like one he had at the rehab facility I first saw him at in 2014. I remember the day […]
The Eight Ball
It started with an eight ball, not of cocaine, but the plastic toy you ask a question, shake, and turn over to see the answer. We were checking out at Primo’s Deli when B grabbed it from the counter and handed it to me, the tips of his fingers bridging mine. Memory paints the December […]
Paintbrush and Trigger 