You park by the side of the road by the apartments, the place you grew up. A sign says residents only but you feel a sense of entitlement being here. You imagine the conversation you will have if someone stops… Read More ›
Memoir
Carson Street slideshow
We are in Michael’s boyfriend’s apartment getting into Michael’s boyfriend’s bag. It is 1993 and Michael is gay before anyone else in Pittsburgh. It isn’t a display, it’s just who he is. The purple scarves and golden hoops, the flowy… Read More ›
The real color of fake blood
Now the big maple leaves are copper colored and scattered across the trails. Some have spots, most are matted together. They will combine down into a tapestry of debris and then recombine with the earth. The scent and sight of… Read More ›
Lessons in recovery
This is how the bargaining works, you get drawn back into the maze. And it is a kind of madness to feel like you don’t have control over your own mind. If the labyrinth metaphor works for you, consider how the walls are formed and why.
The area of a square
We are sitting on a swing on the porch of an airbnb in the town where Lily goes to school, Cedar City, Utah. It’s a fine town, though not much of a town. There’s a university which gives it a… Read More ›
The coarse acting show
But there is a similarity between acting and creative nonfiction writing in being true, through channeling a feeling for others as a form of release. Because we all need a release from this world.
On a Friday morning in September somewhere
I have come here to see my kid. Air BNB blankets gathered around my legs, the windows cracked. The time different, the sun not yet come up, all my things in the closet or my carry-on. It is different not… Read More ›
Did you get your disconnection notice?
Funny how it often feels good to disconnect, but then we long to feel connected again. And maybe that’s the combination I’ve found this week reconnecting with my mom and our home here in Germany. Lily went away for a… Read More ›
An apple no worm had found
We took the 14 toward Backnang, past the place I bought a used hatchback one time with Eberhard, Sulzbach an der Merr. And I could still remember the turnoff where Dawn and I took the car for a test drive… Read More ›
Ich genieße es!
In the morning I sat with Eberhard’s cat under the covered patio out back as the trash collectors wound their way up the small roads to the village. He’d built a series of ladders for the cat to climb from… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 