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Intake Form

I had a date yesterday. He was attractive. Punctual. He pulled the chair out, which I've decided I like. He ordered wine without making it a whole thing. The first ten minutes were fine. Better than fine. I thought: okay. This might be one of the ones that

Mute

I talk dirty in bed. I'm not apologizing for this. I'm forty-five, I know what I like, and if that's too much information you're already in the wrong place. The man last Friday was in the wrong place. Fine at dinner. Fine

It Was Terrible Then Too. Just Differently.

Dating in the nineties was terrible in ways that required effort. You had to show up. In person. With your actual face. No filter, no angle, no three business days to think of a witty response. Just you, live, in real time, hoping whatever you were doing with your hands

Check-in

I've been in this room for three days and I haven't unpacked. Not because I'm leaving soon. Because unpacking feels like a commitment I'm not ready to make to a place that will forget me the moment I check out. The suitcase

The Room With No Furniture

There is an old woman on the corner of my street. She is there most mornings. Selling flowers from a bucket - carnations mostly, the cheap kind, the kind people buy out of obligation. Weddings. Funerals. The occasions that require flowers rather than want them. Nobody stops. I pass her

Dear Concerned Citizen: A Response

Someone sent me fifteen hundred words this week. Fifteen hundred words. Because I said "aggressively unchic." Not because I burned anything down. Not because I said anything actionable. Because I had a feeling about a street and wrote it down, which is — and I want to be precise

A Valentine's Guide for the Rest of Us

Happy Valentine's Day. Or as I call it, Saturday with better marketing. Here's my gift to you - a survival guide. Not for the couples. The couples are fine. The couples have reservations and matching pyjamas and a shared Netflix account they'll fight over

Petya

Bookshop. Tuesday. I'm in fiction, she's in fiction, and already this sounds like the setup to something I'd mock if it happened in someone else's book. Her name is Petya. I don't know that yet. What I know is: green

Third entry

Okay. Let me tell you about this city. I keep mentioning it like you know what I’m talking about. You don’t. I didn’t either. Before last February, Sofia was a word I might’ve confused with a name. A girl in a telenovela. A brand of overpriced

Second entry

Early January has a tone. Not loud. Persistent. Like someone gently clearing their throat and waiting for you to announce who you plan to become. I keep thinking about New Year’s 2005. Boston. Cold, but honest about it. I was young enough to feel solid without checking in with

First entry

23:52. According to the laptop, which feels annoyingly confident about it. End of the year. Almost a year here. Close enough to notice. Not close enough to celebrate. I’m on a sofa that isn’t mine, in an apartment that smells like someone else’s fabric softener, telling