i feel the burn-squeeze of her hands on my shoulders when she tells me it has been enough! and she is squeezing her tears out of me, my sadness mingled and twisted through generations rolls down the sleepless crevices below her water-murky eyes, and then i am sitting on a red putterplane between a window of cotton candy sky and a little boy with toy trucks. i like the way his little shoelace-feet do not quite touch the leather seat in front of him; i like the way he seems to laugh at a personal joke and i think of years and doors closing and i want to measure the distance with my fingers between my hands and the eyes of my m

It was getting on toward midnight when the phone rang. I answered. "Pronto!" "That's very fucking Italian of you." "Eh, merci beaucoup." He paused. "So what's up?" "Absolutely nothing." "Oh. Well. That's good." "You?" "Same." Another pause. I spoke. "So. How are you? About the, um, audition and all." "It's a bitch." This is what I want to say: "You're telling me not getting cast is a bitch? It's not as if you've lost a part in your entire life, up until now, I mean. This is the first role I've gotten in a year, you bastard." This is what I say (after a pause, of course.): "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned it. Whatever. Preten

It was on the 1 train that night that decided I knew what Purgatory would be like. The car (cab? What do you call the little compartments on a subway train? Do you call them compartments?) was one of those crowded ones where you feel like you could jump up in the air a little bit and stay there, suspended on all sides by the bodies of the other passengers. When we got on, I sort of had to pee and I'd just noticed a hangnail. I raised my thumb to my teeth to bite it off as the doors began to close; then this fat man squeezed onto the train at the last minute and his protruding plaid belly pinned my arm in the crooked position. The train star