Patches of snow in the foothills on a bleak morning in March. It is your first week sober. You’ve been a daily drinker for 20 years now and this is the longest you’ve gone since you can remember. It is… Read More ›
Creative Nonfiction
Self-updating systems
I folded myself back into the routine of work. I hadn’t billed a full 40 hours since last July, eight months. What did Lily mean when she said she disassociated? I sometimes got flickers of that and liked it. It… Read More ›
One more wish
That was it. Sometimes I could see how the rest of my life would play out by the way it was going day by day. We watched the sequel to Dune, that world’s lore, the large underground worms and the… Read More ›
Birth, rebirth
That janky toilet seat always leaned left, the toilet paper holder too. In the early morning the body signaled what it would feel like later in life. Early morning or late night it was hard to tell which was which,… Read More ›
Portrait of a snowman with dead grass for hair
All this snow lying around still, like frosting on a gingerbread house. At the park when it’s still dark walking a path between the setting moon and rising sun. Bit by bit the snow receded, leaving splotches of black stains… Read More ›
First Saturday in Washington
No moon at 3 AM but twinkly stars and lawns covered in white, the failing charge of the solar-powered footpath lights made a weak ghostly hue. Had to look up “what to do about itchy scalp” and wondered, could it… Read More ›
(Hidden bonus track)
Got super wired by many machine-generated coffees leaving Frankfurt. Worried I’d get waylaid with a delayed flight and have to sit there stewing in my caffeine high. Tipped the Afghan taxi driver lots; his life was hell and I believed… Read More ›
One of many endings
BESIGHEIM, 5th—II—2025 Wrapped tightly in my sheets and blankets like being inside a sarcophagus trying to get warm. The tingly feeling something’s about to happen: that’s travel. So foreign yet familiar, my second home. Looking down from the saddle on… Read More ›
Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund
3 Feb 25 It was a strange winter holiday. Who vacations in January to some place cold? The Germans in mom’s village were all speculating why I was here and was mom’s health okay? They would go to Mallorca. But… Read More ›
Last Sunday in Germany
2 Feb 25 Now the train moved in reverse as it left the station. I always enjoyed bookending my arrival in Germany with a mirror image at the end. From the time I first saw mom waiting for me at… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 