She shows them she loves them by peeling off their faces and affixing them to hers. She cries like them, she spits like them, she blinks like them. She speaks in a funny accent; forgets words she’s always known. She votes haphazardly and curses at her mother. Every night, she…

it’s 8pm and the buildings are still sweating. their windows blink their heavy lids, weighed down with heat exhaustion. we haven’t been to the beach yet this summer. when you’re deep enough between buildings, sometimes you forget the ocean exists. we have burnt our shoulders brown and sweat a chalk…

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…

the water between New York and New Jersey looks like it should be ice this time of year. it doesn’t feel like Christmas. dogs shiver in their little coats and I agree—the wind has begun to feel cruel. i wonder how many people are pressed to their windows looking down…

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…

do you remember age seven, coming up from the pool for a milkshake? before you’d tasted coffee? before your parents’ secrets? before you felt yourself watched? before the news? before that dog and then the next? before you moved away? before you burnt it down and built again? i’m talking…

there they are again. the lids of coffee cups lining the sidewalks, three-day-old grounds and a kiss of lipstick on the rim. haven’t you missed the sound of a flip-flop crushing them flat as it slaps across the street to some urgent destination? how about the mouths? does it feel…