I Was Oblivious

I’m always so surprised to find out everything isn’t exactly like I thought it was. The things I take for granted could fill an ocean, a vast and fearful one. I wrote this in tribute to a lifetime of tunnel vision and missteps. You Were Oblivious You were born on a big flat rock on…

Pews and Pantyhose. And Lentils.

  I only went because I thought I might be able to still see my parent’s house on the hill from the parking lot. Also I thought maybe the doors would be unlocked. And maybe I could sit alone in familiar stifled silence, rubbing my finger pads over those same those burnt orange- carpeted pews,…

Carnies and “Piss Off” Bonnets

  I live in a town called Independence. Actually I live in the town next to it…but you know how old small towns bleed together over the century, connected by spattered little strip malls and one-story office buildings? We’ve got that going on. If my name were “Christmas Oneill,” I wouldn’t make a big deal…

Drug seeking behavior

I wonder what I look like to that nicely put together pharmacist lady. She’s a graceful 45, long tidy braid, white coat. I give her the script for a fairly impressive dose of Klonopin. My skin is clammy with perfect circular drops of sweat pricking my upper lip, and lazier fat drops streaming down from my…

Go clean yourself up

  I Friended a sweet woman on Facebook who had gone to school with me in our tiny two-room schoolhouse. She’s a teacher now. “He inspired me to go into teaching.” I knew who she was talking about, and found it hard to believe. “How?” I asked. “Because I didn’t think teachers should be like…

Ripped Out of the Cocoon

  Everything is changing. My house and yard are clean, so I feel happier every day. They are clean because I can pay someone to make them that way. I can pay someone because my writing is selling, as soon as I can type it. And the more my writing sells the more opportunities come…

Blue Gatorade and Goodbye

I wrote this once before, a long time ago. I took it down. I’m ready to rewrite it now. It’s long, but it has to be. Settle in. When I ask my seven year old how much she remembers about grandma, who died when she was four, she always tries to please me with memories.…

Tranquil

This is my third day. I haven’t gone more than three days without one in two years. Through most of my 20s, they were an eject button I kept in my purse. If ever the hole in the floor started to open, if ever that nameless terror started to distort me, I could take one,…

Ghosts of the Fourth Floor

I put my son into one of those hospital cribs that have always made me shutter, a metal cage; the perfect place to suffer in. But I didn’t shutter. I laid him next to a horrendous giggling bear-robot of some sort, without the least hint of melancholy. I laid down in the pull out chair next…