#flashstories

But when?

At what point did she come to realize that she would be better liked if she became a chameleon, if she lived for someone else? Changed shades with the seasons, the ebbs and flows of trendy crowds?

And when did she decide that people would consider her a thing of beauty if only she always wore a mask? Covered up her insecurities with paint and plastic, who cares if it chafes or scratches or makes the space underneath her eyes sweat?

And what caused her to stop considering herself worthwhile? Of individuality, of her voice, respect? 

Was it between ages fifteen and sixteen— or sixteen and seventeen... when we had already drifted in different directions? Or maybe it was while I still knew her so well, but one time I blinked too long or woke up one day and failed to notice she had already left.

And she was fifteen years old, like your daughters at home, too young to drive and just still naive enough to make you worry when they’re not back by 11:00. But as your own daughter looks to you with a suddenly scared expression, you’re watching CNN and you take her hand, say, “Don’t you worry darling, that’ll never happen to you.”

And yes indeed, we’re born the lucky ones with fair faces just as beautiful and worthy as those of our darker brothers and sisters. Born into the right state, in the right neighborhood, on the right side of towns that are “not segregated” anymore. Man, we left all that absurdity in the sixties.

The girl in the orange bathing suit, lying pinned to the ground for four minutes screaming for someone to call her momma would beg to differ.

But aren’t you glad that your daughter wasn’t there?

Fast Minds Never Still

Wire emboldens me, the chains, the epileptic rainbow charms hanging off a lake drain the imagination from an overactive mind. Drip dry, zip fly so functioning can happen once again, and again, and again, and again...

Slipstream, I’m mean, I dream dreams of seams of cantaloupe lined up in columns of antelope (what are antelope(s)?). You’re out of your goddamn mind, go to sleep, it’s already morning, no it’s actually 12:30 PM. Then get off of drugs, start healing—

Ma’am, I’m naturally this way. Thanks to George Saunders and Salvador Dalí. 

Surrealism ruined my life.

And in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to run a ship aground or jump out of a rocket or drive a car right off of a bridge and into the vast, gorgeous sea.

But do not mistake my sentiments for notions of suicide. No, suicide was unthinkable.

It was just that I felt so, inhumanly, incoherently free in that moment that I felt very nearly ready to challenge death.

I felt so alive that I was beginning to doubt I should ever die.