1. Your fears have an open tab at a bar called “Everyone”.

2. Your humiliations go there too. And they are, in fact, not such bad company.

3. It’s okay to escape into the open arms of a different world for a while.

4. You are not crazy. (Or at least, not the craziest of the lot.)

5. You can witness what everyone is too afraid to say or do.

6. You can realize what everyone denies.

7. You will be inspired to fly your freak flag. Proudly.

8. You might just find what you need (because you can’t always get what you want)

9. The REAL definition of “unrequited love” is the love you feel for characters.

10. And: “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” - C.S. Lewis

And now she knew,

from the very beginning,

her heart had been plucked out,

scooped,

the strings stretched so far and sudden,

she'd never even felt the pain.

Just the ache of memory.

But returned,

the strings dangling loose,

now between two lungs,

they stung,

stung,

fighting to remember their original shape

their original place.

Puberty.

Quarter-life crisis.

Mid-life crisis.

Death.

Two down. Two to go.

“Hey folks, thanks for coming out tonight. This turnout is incredible. Yes, ma’am I love you too. I love me some Seattle anytime... Well, not all of Seattle but certainly you, your rack, and maybe you too, Sir…

No, I love you all. I love people, believe it or not. I know as a comedian that’s not usually the case. ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ could be the title to all our autobiographies, but I’m fifty now. So…I’ve paid my dues. And I’m gonna start loving people, enjoying things. Doing all that middle-aged stuff like retiring, reflecting, getting the squirts…

You know, I’ve been in this business for thirty-five years, can you believe it? Thirty-five years. To some of you miniskirts, that’s how long ago Jesus lived. To the rest of you calculator apps, it means I started at fifteen. Yes, I see you, fucker. Turn that shit off. I’m talking here! I know you need to know the math but like I said, I’ve been in this business for THIRTY-FIVE YEARS so I know just to TELL you the numbers!

So drink your beer, enjoy the show, and be stupid.

Geez.

Stupid people are the best. Really are. I love them. I love only them. I should’ve made that clear when I said I love people. Nope. Just the stupid ones. That’s why I said I love you all.

No, I'd never associate you guys with stupid. Dirty, maybe. And weird Just a bunch of intelligent weirdoes dressed as dirty hobos. Who are drunk. But I appreciate it. I appreciate the inebriation. It makes my job easier. I don’t get insulted anymore because I know I’m never gonna get any funnier than I am now. When I was fifteen, and twenty years old, I used to get really upset when people would get drunk at my shows. They wouldn’t heckle me or anything. I don’t think I ever got heckled because I was so bad, they probably thought I was the intermission, some wannabe emo-snot attempting slam poetry. I’d do bits about my dick and how I used to call it Harry Potter because it wasn’t until something big and hairy called it a wizard that life became infinity better. Yes, I know, bad. Really bad. I would never infer that Hagrid could possibly represent J.K. Rowling’s vagina.

Strangely enough, I was a virgin at that time.

That time when I was making terrible jokes because I was trying it out. Testing to see if the funniness I thought of mysef was really just that—that we were hilarious. That we could be comedians. Every comedian remembers that first laugh, the “bug” as they call it. And rightfully so. Calling it a “bug”, I mean, because it’s a fucking parasite. It burrows in you and takes over and no matter how many drugs you do and how many pussies you lie about pounding, you can’t get rid of it. And you come to a point when you have to see, you have to try and get your stuff out there, even if it fails the first thousand times, because the parasite has taken over so much of you, you’re no longer scared. And that’s when you become who you’re supposed to be, do what you’re supposed to do. For some it’s being an actor, or a writer. For others, it’s something useful like a scientist or Victoria Secret’s model. For me, clearly it was this. And it took thirty-five years and I’m in balls-deep. No longer just the tip. And I still hate people, but that’s okay because I get to hand out gems like, ‘Hagrid represents J.K. Rowling’s vagina.’ so fuck it. Try getting that out of your head."

They came into this world together, knowing it would not be the case the way out.

Didn't matter their ages would always be conjoined. One would always be older, and one would always be taller. They spent a life re-measuring that pinch of minutes between them, debating every inch that came and then went.

But they knew, somehow, when it all ended, they would be together. It needn't be said.

Until the time came and it wasn't so.

For it happened so suddenly, in the night.

And though she was older and taller (still!), she was now the second. So with patience and grace, she waited. While in silence, she begged, begged for death. To never have been the second.

The corners of the room piercing out, pointing in.

The weight of whispers against your ears, resurrected.

The youngest you will ever be, stripped just like that.

And that.

And

The beat of a heart.

Hearts. None of them yours.

Of the graying and the grayed.

When they stop, how on earth will you find them again?

The lives inside yours. Splitting and cracking, snapping like bark.

Rings. The rings exposed.

The ringing

A second swells. The moment bleached.

And the blindness of that bleached moment.

The blindness of all this

The blindness.

The blindness.

The blindness.

The blindness of the

The front doors to the school were ridiculously heavy.

It had something to do with its hinges, we think, because the actual doors were more window than anything else. This only added to its trickery, that something so illuminated with light could make you feel like you were dragging concrete across sand.

If permissible, a person could pass days lounging on the school steps, watching the students tramp up to the doors, grasp the long, looping handles and find suddenly, their pulls were now tugs, their tugs now fully-matured heaves.

Many dealt with the doors' stubbornness subtly: taking root and standing their ground, their knees bent and locked as their sneakers took grip. But the very special few found themselves snapping forward with enough crack in their shoulder to make any witness flinch. As if the doors had tried to rip them open instead.

Normally, the act of watching people open and enter through doors was like trying to remember the last time you blinked: you didn't. But the school only had one set of front doors and they were so famous for their heft and drag, you wondered why they were never fixed or why people could never remember how heavy they were and always surprised because of it.

It was just one of those things that, without any reason or will, had just come to be.

I'll stand beside that tree tonight and when they come back, I'll make them pay. Not for the graffiti. That's important. Those old splashes of blacken blue, orange and red letters have been there longer than I. Between us, there's more grainy drips in our faces than all the brick combined.

Even my hair, short and white matches the grass the paint dives into: a fine, thin buzz, coated with the first frost and combed in streaks one way.

But unlike the grass and the earth where everything is eventually swallowed, my own black ink shows through, four faded bars with bent ends. I've worn a hat for thirty years, an old fisherman's wool, but tonight I want them to see it, to know.

In the hours to come, I imagine the light fading out, the chill setting it. The crackling of moss up the back of the tree as it freezes while the dank green poofs in the underarms of the bare branches sweat and ripen.

Not for me. I won't feel the freeze tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps. But not tonight.