Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
There comes an age when screwing up is not cute anymore. You know that, because people are constantly telling you. It’s not cute anymore, Raleigh. My name is Raleigh, by the way; Raleigh of Boston, Massachusetts. Although to be fair, my mother is from Raleigh the actual city, so it Read more
There is a blue plastic WalMart bag caught in a branch of the maple tree in my daughter’s front yard. It has been there since April, four seasons ago. It’s amazingly high – far beyond the nest of squirrels and the honeycomb of holes the woodpecker has drilled. Way above Read more
Mother Servant Concubine Lonely Dreamer Alive only by a whisper Useless, never enough. Stoic Listless Paranoid Bored Always a smile. Traumatized and the perpetrator. Victim or Victor? In my starring role, I used to be, moving ethereal cinematic relishing the play. Re-runs on constant loop. Looking, looking Curtain falling, happiness Read more
Useful. Now that’s a word I despise. Over the years, during numerous times of personal distress, I’ve heard the same, mundane, uninvited advice: “One day, the pain may be useful to you.” My reply to this ridiculous guidance? BS! How could pain ever be useful? Clearly, I understood the definition Read more
As a child, you lay on your father’s belly while the New York Yankees run bases on a small black and white television in your old apartment. Your small frame, so thin your mother has to “take in” every pair of pants you own, rises and falls with his breath. Read more
I used to love steak. It was a defining personality trait. I was known for my love of slightly still mooing dead cow. I could have had it every meal for the rest of my life and died tragically young but ecstatically happy. My bloodstream was probably over the legal Read more
I get older; you get older. That’s how this works. My legs are healing. Bright pockmarks of red and white mark where the surgeon’s knife entered. An “X” to kill the tributaries. That’s what he told me. A balding, gentle man in his late seventies with his hands on my Read more
For Leonard I’ve seen this room, and I’ve walked this floor. You know, I used to live alone before I knew you. The ceilings in my apartment in Wilkes-Barre are at least twenty feet high. I am not yet twenty-seven and am already divorced. When I come home drunk, I Read more
