How many selves do we get?
identity
The grate-covered mineshaft seam
I tried to lose myself in the woods again and came upon the grate-covered mineshaft seam, a grid of rebar set above a dark, mysterious hole. It looked like a mouth in the ground yawning, dripping. I balanced on the… Read More ›
How the house felt after the kids left for summer camp
Outside it was warm and the lupine stalks were bending down, some on their faces like mollusks gumming the ground but not making it very far, frozen mid-suck. The dog smelled bad, a telltale bad like she’d rubbed herself in… Read More ›
Fifty-fifty clown
The crow’s wings are magician hands that flap and disappear through the swirl of animal souls and the gray marine layer of morning. The lake is gray too, ribbed by a breeze or by paddle boats, the same each day… Read More ›
The first death
The dog’s warm tongue on my cheek, the den by the window where the sun comes in to expose the hair on my carpet, the dust on the lamps, the dirt on my legs from the morning’s hike. Going up… Read More ›
Outside the frame
I made plans to see friends I hadn’t seen in about 30 years, since high school. I took a Lyft to the bar and sat in a table by the front, and sent one of them a text: Pat fell… Read More ›
Real time
Probably the most comforting thing I could do was drink in bed. When I quit drinking I wrote a list of all the things I pledged I wouldn’t do when I started drinking again and one of the top 3… Read More ›
No breaks (from a plane)
There were times I felt like I had to write, I had the impulse, to save the moment. I thought I could just throw my arms out and surround it, I could throw my line in the water and bring… Read More ›
Excavation of self, through rotten banana peels and skin
At last the smell that was really me came to bare, to fully express itself, as a piece of rotten fruit or uneaten meat, table scraps left to bloom in some dark, neglected space. A smell, an essence, of toxins… Read More ›
Two-faced Janus
It felt lighter in the afternoon than it should, for this time of day. January turns itself around like that. The gardener came for the first time in a while, worked his ass off raking beds, blowing down the pavement,… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 