sometimes life isn’t worth the pain. i’m going for a swim. goodbye, my love.

You know that moment when you hug somebody, when your heart feels warm and high in your chest and tingly? When you feel just for a second like a baby in a womb… that nothing...

Any earthly production would have been cancelled at the slightest suggestion of rain, but this was William’s Stage—it was William’s call—and if the children danced and the congregation remained transfixed, the show would go on.

94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney “D” still looked like a backwards “G.” Words like...

When he did think—when his brain began the slow chugging of rusty gears—the only thoughts that came were unspeakable things like, what’s the worst age a child can die? Worse yet was—after hours spent staring...

She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and...

his stubble was cut smooth. he smelled of aftershave, dry deodorant and sex-tarnished bedsheets. those eyes–grey, strong, inlaid beneath a firm brow that displayed such hate and SUCH love–they seduced her every time… but not...

grow a girl up quick”; it was only last november that she turned seventeen.

in the know” assured me that they were beautiful.

You’ll understand someday, James.

The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.

Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence… but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in...

But in the end, black can never be white, one plus one must always equal two, and Mara Lynn was a normal little girl.

When left unsatisfied, lust becomes violence.

William looked up… through his tears… past the catwalk and lights… past the sky… through the dark and clouds and stars and into the void where he once knew God existed, then turned himself outside-in,...

Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.