[This story came about because a friend posted on FB about a cricket in his basement, and somehow in the comment thread, I said something about wanting there to be a fairy tale about a cricket only with gender roles reversed to the prince gets rescued, or something, and my friend's wife basically said, "Well then write it, you dork."  Well, without ( Read more... )

You probably don't want to read these dreams; they involve nuclear holocaust, and living but rotting bodies (chiefly mine), and non-functional bathrooms. I post them in part because these are themes that come up in my dreams with an exhausting regularity, and in part because it was somewhat unique to have three archetypal-for-me dreams in the ( Read more... )

[trigger warning for child sexual abuse]( Read more... )

This started off as stream-of-consciousness writing to my shrink, and I'd like to be able to turn it into something more precise and focused, but my mind, for months, has been unable to think in a precise, focused way. So rather than pretend to myself that someday soon I'll tighten it into "real" writing, I'm just going to post it now.

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Thursday, March 10, 2016

When the event occurs in my shrink's office, there are rarely words. Often there aren't even thoughts that I try and fail to put words to. There's just a -need-. Not a need for a certain thing - or not a thing I am aware of - just that I need something, something I don't have, perhaps something that doesn't exist in the ( Read more... )

[This is the novel about the single mother of Sam, who is 7 years old in this scene. It's already established (or will be once more of those scenes are written) that he's musically gifted. Prior to this scene, he was trying to learn to play violin, but his 7-year-old dexterity couldn't keep up with his perfectionism; he couldn't stand the sound ( Read more... )

Some children,
in the night,
call to their parents
to protect them from
the monster in the closet.

Some children,
in the night,
open the closet door
and hope the monster inside
will protect them.

Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/81503.html. Feel free to comment there
( Read more... )

[I wrote this in June. I meant to edit it to be more coherent before posting it, but that's not going to happen, so I'm posting it as-is ( Read more... )

This is the first letter I have received from my mother in the last three years.  I'd written her three times.  I haven't phoned in that time, except to call and ask if there was a family history of heart arrhythmia, because my doctor wanted to know.  She has phoned me once, to tell me my aunt, her sister, had died; she called me about two weeks ( Read more... )

When there's no one else to do it, and I "do the buildings" at work, it means I leave the post office at 3:45 p.m., grab the few pieces of mail in a small drop and put them in a nearby blue bin, then walk a block and a half to the JFK federal building; I collect and sort mail there for 10-15 minutes, then head to the O'Neill federal building at ( Read more... )