"Jane, you are not going to believe this." I'm practicing what I'm going to say. I've been pacing up and down in front of her apartment building for a full twenty minutes. "Listen, Jane I've been offered a..." No, that's not going to work. "Jane, I'm sorry, but I can't let this go on anymore."

Yes that's it, I've got to make a change. It is still cold out. Even though we've had three days of sunshine and all the snow has melted and birds are singing in the trees they keep planting by the sidewalks. The trees that are never going to get older or bigger, but are going to die choked by cigarette butts and empty plastic water bottles, and chewing gum scraped onto their trunks.

I'm suddenly glad I'm not a tree. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad. If I were a tree I wouldn't have to see her with him. I know what they're up to. I know how she looks at him, when I'm in the room. Dance lessons, you bet your fucking ass, dance lessons. I'll eat my hat. What kind of dance do you do on the mattress when I'm not around?

No. Poison. That's a poison pill, that thought will grow vines and choke your mind. Stop it.

Just another nip from the flask. Wasn't it supposed to be warm today? We've had three days of sunshine, and the last time I read the newspaper my horoscope said I'd feel the sunshine coming through.

The homeless man on the corner, didn't ask me for change. He just let me walk on by. Do I look that bad? I know this coat is ripped, I keep meaning to sew it shut, but I've only got a little bit of time left to tell Jane that I'm leaving.


"Jane!" I shout up at her window. There aren't any lights on but I know she's there, hips tipped up to heaven and him pointing south at hell.

"Do you hear me Jane?" Lights go on and off in the other windows. Another sip, another smoke. Is she coming down? Should I run? Hearts beating faster. Why? I practiced this. There's a cop on the corner down the street.

"Jane I'm leaving now." I shout. I shouldn't shout so much. It is ripping up my throat.
I've got to go and sew my coat.

Tommy Andrews Lost His Tooth On March Twenty-Third

Last week Tommy Andrews came down the street holding his arm that was bleeding. He looked really pale and his shirt was all red. He was shouting at me to get inside and to have my mother call an ambulance. That's when the car drove by again and this time they slowed down and shot Tommy Andrews in the face. This morning I found one of his teeth.

All week long I've been staring in the mirror. At school I excuse myself from the classroom and go stand in front of the mirror in the boy's room. I look at my eyes for so long that they start tearing up. I think the teachers are just glad that I'm not talking to Jeremy Gunderson anymore.

I haven't been outside in a while. I'm not afraid that the methheads will get me. I know Tommy Andrews did something to them, and you can't mess with methheads, its like kicking a sack of badgers, you leave that to the police.

I just don't feel safe. I mean if a great guy like Tommy Andrews can get his head blown off in What Cheer Iowa, where are you safe? Tomorrow the sun could explode and we'd know about it eight minutes too late. I suppose there's nowhere safe and that I should just be ready to have my head blown off by methheads any minute, wherever I am.

I suppose I should take Tommy Andrews' tooth to somebody. I'm sure his family will want it. But how do you give them a part of their son? Here Mrs. Andrews, here's this tooth, I'm pretty sure that it's Tommy's. He took the football team to state, and here is his tooth. Do you think Mrs. Andrews will think about when she was pregnant with Tommy? Will she hold his tooth and think about the head that that tooth used to be in, and how that head was once in her belly? I bet that would be weird. I know my mom has some of my baby teeth in an old pill bottle somewhere, and whenever I ask her why, she says I won't understand until I have kids of my own.

Tomorrow is April 1st, and we're all going to the funeral. I hope Mrs. Andrews doesn't think I'm telling a joke when I hand her the tooth. I hope I don't laugh on accident because of how nervous I am.

Hot News

Hey Friends!

Due to a hatred of everything in it I am putting a full stop on that novel I was so jazzed about a couple of months ago.

We'll see how I feel about it in the future, but right now it just reads as a bunch of pretentious drivel, really it drips with angst.

So until I can cool down and come back to the work I am going to return to my first love, stories set in the Midwest in small dying towns!

Get ready for some guilt and nostalgia mixed up together with some prime self-hatred and regrets, we're heading back to the Midwest where everything started.