Flaw Salad

“It’s one of the oddest relationships I’ve ever had,” she said. “That’s saying a lot,” he said. “I imagine.” They laughed for a good long while. — read more

As she sang along to songs and remembered the people she used to sing them with, she realized for the first time that he was relatively inexperienced in endings. Her moving on was always done with the faith that someone new would arrive, or she would find him, and the gaps would be filled. She… — read more

I’ve been called crazy, and I’ve been called boring. I’ve seduced, and I’ve repulsed. I’ve made people laugh, and I’ve made people cringe. I’ve inspired envy, and I’ve inspired pity. I’ve been loved, and I’ve been hated. Every villain has a henchman, and every hero a nemesis. External feedback is useless, and that’s probably the… — read more

Bits of you are stripped away—by time, circumstance, thoughtless words of others—and with neither effort nor consent, you’re changed. Who you were becomes a shadowy figment lurking at the blurry edges of memory. You held so long, so tightly to that someone, the someone you thought you were, but it melted in your desperate palm. You’re left agape.… — read more

I remember things about you I shouldn’t. I remember the way you held my head in your hands the first time you said, “I love you.” We were in my car outside that park, the same one I wandered through as we spoke on the phone the second time. It wasn’t the first, I know, because… — read more