I went back to work. Six months since the last contract. The timing wasn’t great with Lily just home from treatment but when you’ve been out of work for that long any timing will do. And when I heard it… Read More ›
creative nonfiction
Outposts
When it’s almost dark you can hear the wind picking up across the desert. Maybe a flagpole clanking, some far-off dogs, the day’s last birds. We are in a new development surrounded by farmlands and distant mountains. The ground is… Read More ›
May you let me be forgotten
Finally lying down again. All these cherry blossoms like handfuls of confetti coming down. That and some birds tweeting and the neighborhood kids playing. In spring you forget everything bad it seems. Fall and winter give us plenty of time… Read More ›
Pictures of you
In the den on the bookshelf he keeps a framed set of photos of himself. Starting at 10 o’clock and moving clockwise, he is a grade school student in a striped red turtleneck, the late 1970s. The picture has the… Read More ›
April
The album is my link to him, it came out the year he died. It’s just called April and it was released on April 1, 2008. I remember buying the CD, standing outside the record store waiting for the bus…. Read More ›
The spring of our discontent
It’s spring again, so I bought a book called Global Catastrophic Risks. It’s not the right book for the season but I’m compelled to read it because it cost so much. It’s thick and scientific with a Bruegel painting on… Read More ›
Letting go of Jon Cook
In 1996 I didn’t know what to do there, I just knew I had to be on the internet. There was a little internet cafe around the corner from my apartment on Broadway, Seattle’s hip, gay neighborhood I’d just moved… Read More ›
Brief candles
Leaving Utah last September was one of the saddest times of my life, saying goodbye to our daughter Lily. That little airport in the middle of nowhere, so desolate. Sitting in the lobby waiting for the airport workers to open… Read More ›
Midwinter break
Literally everyone standing in line is on their phone. It said the wait time was 85 minutes but when we got halfway through they said it would be longer, that’s all they said. And when Charlotte checked the wait time… Read More ›
The signet pinky ring went missing
I had to let go of the ring. The ring was gone. The ring came off when I removed my work gloves, fell to the ground, a garden bed. The ring lay unnoticed for a time on its side. The… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 