Photo: “Hollywood Beach Boardwalk” by epitomized1, CC BY-SA 2.0 I had a little crick in my neck and she started rubbing my back, hard. I got goosebumps and something popped. That’s when she told me never to face pain head on./ If you don’t invest, you don’t get...
Photo: Paul R. Burley, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons To celebrate the big bathtub and to feel Chicago under my feet, I went looking for travel-sized bubbles and bombs so my skin could feel fizzy and smooth in the gluttony. Up in the White House of the Midwest, I...
Photo: I pound the heels of my boots into the concrete: short thuds under the rattling train. Ten miles from your hospital bed commuters rush past me, their eyes searching the sky to avoid mine, a thumb of ash across my forehead. Archaic, too public—the way I cry. I...
Photo: Pythaglio, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons I stopped in Columbus to stretch my legs but that was where the trip really began. A brick sidewalk ran between red buildings trees shaking loose their white blossoms like soft snow. The street was empty....
Photo: Nate Lee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons After the engagement ended I pointed my little Mazda east and started driving. Pennsylvania highways unspooled beneath me like a dare. In Philadelphia I walked through rooms where men once argued themselves...
The notes of pineapple hit me like a cream pie in Anita Bryant’s bitchy face. It’s my last night in San Francisco, and I had to try visiting Castro before I left. It’s too late for museums and walking tours. I’m too tired from standing under convention center...
