Dear Lauren, Love Lauren

Dear Lauren, Love Lauren

The following is a completely fictional recorded conversation between my past and present selves. It is transcribed as it was spoken and it is also not real.   18-year-old Lauren: Dear 25-year-old Lauren, I hope you’re no longer miserable. Please tell me that...
Tiny White Moments

Tiny White Moments

Reaching through the grated door, I run a fingertip along the tiny white foreleg of a tiny white lamb curled on the straw inside. He slid into the world less than a week ago beside his glossy black sister.

The Golden Fool

The Golden Fool

But make no mistake, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a flawed statement. It would only work in a dreamlike utopia, where every person exhibits an identical preference and attitude—a scenario I truly believe would bore me to death.

I’m scared she gonna die

I’m scared she gonna die

I don’t do anything for the man who bangs on the church door and tells me about his probation and court date in Bremerton an hour and a half away and the company that let him go after thirty years to save themselves a retirement plan and the chronic pain in his shoulder and the botched knee surgery and how he just needs eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry or else they’ll throw him back in jail over a lousy eight dollars and ten cents and could I please, please, I know you’re good guy, please just give me eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry?

Hard as Flint

Hard as Flint

DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel stepped down too, probably because who wants to talk to the media, the public, the citizens of Flint, and the POTUS after your department “misinterpreted the water safety regulations?”

To Catch A Train

To Catch A Train

I took a train every morning in Budapest to a little café called Budapest Bagel: a bar and a bagel shop where I somehow received college credit to write short stories and read novels following a longstanding expatriate tradition.

This Is A Lie

This Is A Lie

D.A.R.E. to explore the unexplored. Here be monsters and suddenly we’re the first ones, wading through myth and legend and finding freedom, happiness, and warmth. We don’t see dragons or lose our grades. We don’t get pregnant. We aren’t shoving suppositories up our asses à la Trainspotting or whoring à la Requiem for a Dream. It’s just nice. Warm and cozy and soft. One of us uses the word “underwhelming.”

Against the Wind

Against the Wind

So I scoop the Cherry Pineapple Parfait, listen to Katy Perry, and wonder if any of my effort will ever make any difference or if I’ll always be as powerless and obsolete as a plastic bag drifting through the wind.

the post calvin