My paranoia began when I started taking LSD at the age of fifteen. Does that seem young?
I knew a family in Franklin, the Osbournes. Mary Osbourne was given a dose of acid on her 10th birth by her older siblings. Her little brother Jeffery, aged five, could roll a…
This episode talks about suicide.
The way Frankie killed himself was cruel. The act itself is inherently cruel to loved ones but he did something that was diabolically clever.
For most of his 41 years, Frankie lived with Ethel. I find that incomprehensible. He was the first of us to…
i put the stage
murderer’s sharpied
talisman on my forehead
amethyst redundant
crystal redundancy
duck taped
across my chest hairs
testing one two three
can you dig it?
offended by the idea of
a chosen people either
everybody gets it or
nobody does
mike check mike check
they say in…
I’m thinking of a song. You know this song. Everyone does. Some of you already think you know the song I’m thinking of. This is because most memories are recalled by association. The third sentence of this paragraph has an implied meaning: that the song is universally known and recognized…
My memories aren’t linear. They appear as disconnected fragments, unrelated to each other. Like scenes from a post-modern novel without a coherent timeline. When I recall a memory I have no idea how old I was at the time of the original experience. Site-specific memories sometimes give me a range…
The only artifact I have from my childhood is a deck of Tarot cards I acquired when I was 14. I didn’t share my interest in Tarot with anybody back then. It was just something I explored by myself whenever I had a chance to be alone. It was a…
Ethel. Born Ethel Marie Jennings in 1933. Sometime in the 70’s she began using the name Marie. She claimed Marie as part of her healing journey. Ethel was the little girl who was sexually abused by three older brothers. Ethel was the meek, timid, and abused wife of a raging…
(I attended an online writing class this morning and one of the prompts resulted in this short episode. It surprised me how easily this came because I’ve never written about this memory before. …
(Part of a series. The beginning is here.)
I was raped. I think. No, not raped. Sexually abused. No, not that. Well, yes, that, but that was at home and more subtle than the incident that I’m talking about now. That was subtle abuse. There’s nothing subtle about it. And…
