Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can’t see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.

Was I like honey thinking it’s a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl

In the weeks that followed, we amazed ourselves. Our habits slid apart easily…And our very few intimacies were simply discontinued. Where did they go, those things we did? Were they recycled? Did some new couple...

… we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.

So this was what it was like not to be me.

Sometimes I lie in bed trying to decide which of my friends I truly care about, and I always come to the same conclusion: none of them.

This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in...

In the recurring dream everything has already fallen down, and I’m underneath. I’m crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl I realize that this one was the Big One. It was...

If I could quietly kill her without anyone knowing, I would.

We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.

Why do you think we are the only animal that kisses? She was near again. Because the area in front of our faces is our most intimate zone. She drew a breath. This is why...

This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it. But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it...

After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I...

Maybe he wouldn’t say anything, which is the worst thing men do.

As if I feared that the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further...

And it struck me that maybe True magazine had been wrong. Maybe there are no New Men. Maybe there are only the living and the dead, and all those who are living deserve each other...

The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn’t allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me....

I wondered how many other things had flown past me into death. Perhaps many. Perhaps I was flying past them, like the grim reaper, signaling the end. This would explain so much.

The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the...

I walked down the hall and saw that [she] was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It’s a slippery slope, and it’s best just to sit in...

And why had Deb’s last boyfriend dumped her? I dumped him. Maybe you didn’t French-kiss him enough. I promise you that wasn’t it. Tell me how many times a day you kissed, and I’ll say...

They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked...

You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it’s not true. Generally, people don’t like each other very much. And that goes...

For a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink...

Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front...