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Delayed Reactions

After the hammer slams down on your thumb / or the hurtful word penetrates, / a stunned moment follows.

Manifesto

In April I believe only in lilac, dogwood, and wisteria — such suddenness and color, indecency and mess, / always opening and opening, and fading, and falling away.

Suburban Bitch Cruise

Virginia and I were in an English-literature class together during my senior year at the State University of New York at Albany. She wore black-rimmed “cafe girl” glasses and had one of those bright, pale faces that slips back and forth from plain to attractive. Altogether her style was a mixture of grunge and hippie, and I found Virginia sexy as hell. During the week that we covered James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, she and I united against the close-minded faction in class who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, comprehend how one man could love another. We chastised them on breaks and shouted them down during discussions. At the end of class one evening, Virginia discovered that I, too, liked getting high, and she smiled — her face alive with mischief — and counted off three words on her fingers: Suburban. Bitch. Cruise.

Brightest Corners

My sponsor told me this would happen. “Temptation comes from the brightest corners and at the most unexpected times,” he said. I washed my hands and face in cold water and flushed the toilet to make it appear like a genuine bathroom visit. I walked out of the bathroom, said I had to go. She scrambled her sorrys and for the first time in my life I meant it when I said, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

The Mysterious Life Of The Heart