There’s a foot long scar dissecting my torso. It starts at the top of my rib cage and extends down, at a slight diagonal angle, to just below my pubic bone.
Category: Internal
Sexting
I heard the text message alert or saw the (1) on my Facebook tab and suddenly my skin was hot and my mouth was watering like one of Pavlov’s dogs.
Refraction
If you wear night-vision goggles, you can see certain wavelengths behind your sternum; infrared radiating through hairline cracks in your heart.
Seventeen
I remember the first time I left town after having a boyfriend. I don’t know if he was really a boyfriend because he still had a wife.
Drive
That night we fought about his wife. We were drunk. He had to buy the beers because I was only eighteen.
Kicking in Malibu
My skin is hot and bumpy, my hair hurts where it is attached to my scalp. There is a growing fire in my chest and I feel like it’s burning me from the inside out.
New Mexico, 35 degrees.
It’s nights like these that I can’t stop thinking about you and those deserted middle of the night Albuquerque roads. There was a dive bar where we drank Bohemia and tequila shots and played on a pool table with ripped felt. It was impossible to make a straight shot. It was freezing outside. I didn’t…
SFV: Sanctuary
The valley’s not really magic. When I was a kid I thought it was, because when you drive north on the 405 there’s a moment when you come over the hill and you see the valley laid out beneath you. At night the lights on the buildings glitter red and white and yellow. Those San…
The Soft Underbelly
Sex became my way of connecting with the world; of feeling human. At the same time, it also kept me safely insulated. I’m not sure why I liked it that way but I think it might be because too many men died and I didn’t want to feel that kind of pain anymore.
Return.
Clocks tick more loudly here, and more slowly. Time moves so differently that the events that make up your day have become meaningless; more boring than ordinary. It’s quiet, insular, and safe here. The neighborhood is protected by walls made with decorative bricks. At the entrance there is a sign that reads Crestview in fancy…
San Blas and Other Crazy Things
I read it, and I wanted to cry. So I started drinking water quickly to push it down. It doesn’t really matter. I know you loved me more than anything. You taught me that the only way to love is unconditionally. You explained so much. I argued even when I knew you were right because…
Allison McCabe 