the little brick apartment with the dirty carpet. an oversized dresser and 150 square feet, all your own. the true meaning of solitude — and how it wraps around your bones in its quietest moments. the first 40 hours at a desk; a summer of fluorescent light sun and cubicle…

we were always at Olio waiting for the next two people to fill the seats at our four top. every night we wore black with glitter smudged across our eyes and between our fingers—we were too old to feel invincible but it was something close to it. there was the…

first there’s the couple crawling across the white tablecloth just to deliver the punchline, heads back in hilarity before the joke’s even finished. does the pavement remember all the dinners it’s caught the drops from? the flood of people leaking out their front doors every morning, just trying to find each…

Oscar took his time twisting on his blue tie, staring at himself in the mirror. It was Wednesday — that’s why he was wearing blue. Always blue on Wednesdays he recited to himself, then shuddered. Shut up, you loser. Did he really have the energy for another one of these…

in that room, i inhaled hundreds of late summer nights through the holes in the screen; cicadas and suburban silence. i hid under heavy covers, whispered into the sweaty house phone, begged the pale blue walls to tell me what was next. i tried on different faces, a naivete so…