Your Numbness Is Something Perhaps You Cannot

You Know, As Fiction Writers, If Our Instincts Are Off, We Can't Pay Our Bills.

I've Accrued A Kind Of Patience, I Believe, Loosely Like Change.

I Often Think That At The Center Of Me Is A Voice That At Last Did Split, A House In My Heart So Invaded With Other People And Their Speech, Friends I Believed I Was Devoted To, People Whose Lives I Can Simply Guess At Now, That It Gives Me The Impression I Am Simply A Collection Of Them, That They All Existed For Themselves, But Had Inadvertently Formed Me, Then Vanished. But, What: Should I Have Been Expected To Create My Own Self, Out Of Nothing, Out Of Thin, Thin Air And Alone?

Usually She Ordered A Cup Of Coffee And A Cup Of Tea, As Well As A Brownie, Propping Up Her Sadness With Chocolate And Caffeine So That It Became An Anxiety.

I Did Think Reviewers Were Supposed To Be Polite About Story Collections - Collections Are Rather Delicate Creatures In The Literary Environment - But Not Everybody Got This Memo, I Guess.