I was a couple of summers past twenty but I felt there were stones under that frozen, dun earth that were younger than me.

We all have our safe places, where none are invited. They are lonely rooms full of the musk of memory. Sanctuary rather than adventure.

Tied to the physical, deaf to the eternal, riveted by my own shortcomings, I was thinking only of what a bad choice I'd made when choosing a partner for a chat. This guy was faking timidity to lure...

I retreat to my room and lock the door. Lying on my bed, my brain cyclones with thoughts of men and boys and boys and men. All making the wrong choices.

In the night, I am kept awake by the endless chatter of my inner self. I hear it speak softly of old hurts and fondly of past loves, while its demands and anxieties resound throughout me in...

Have you asked yourself why you protect me? Are you as messed up about all this as me?

What counts that we're not counting?

She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses,...

Foggy nights bring some comfort. He can get lost in the mist and there is no one to stare or question.

When God said 'Let there be light', maybe he meant it inside.

I found Esau's field guide at the bottom of my pack. Taking a candle into the bedroom, I read his book until my eyes grew heavy. From his vast notes, it seemed that almost every plant and tree in the...

The world has loosened, like a woman preparing for bed who lets her hair flow free. And I am whispering the words, knowing that words matter, and smiling as I say them to the shadows of the gods of...

He had talked of getting occupation of this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined the opportunity and...

You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.

It was not how one lived, but how one chose to die.

Who but a drunk, I wonder looking back, could sit on the porch alone and get in an argument?

You're always with me. But that must also be some version of you that I made up inside my head

I searched my feelings, an activity never far removed from looking for a dead rat in a spidery crawl space under the house.

It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the...

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

Introspection does not need to be a still life. It can be an active alchemy.