Dolan preaches a devil’s sermon. This starved man. This bone cage for black heart. Thirteen searchers circle him in the blizzard’s aftermath. Half his congregation is snowblind, pupils glare-blown wide.
When I dream of the floods, we are sinking. We’re sinking because my tiny arms can’t carry your fat little body. If it weren’t for how short your limbs are, we’d be the same size. Those hams keep weighing us down.
I wasn’t reading it as a student, forced to write some terrible essay about “themes” and “symbolism,” and I wasn’t reading it as an emo high-schooler, desperate for an angsty kid narrator with whom to identify. I was reading Salinger as an adult, a father...
My son came into my office and handed me the assignment from his second grade teacher, written on a half-sheet. He was wearing sweatpants and had his t-shirt on his head, draped back over his shoulders, so that he looked vaguely like a pharaoh.
It's taken two years of being “normal” to return to the VA Medical Center. “Normal” is what the psychotherapist told me. One year out of the military, inactive, and treatment felt like a healthy choice. Two years later, it feels like a necessity.
Pastor danced through the crowd, knocking people down with a single touch of Holy Ghost power. Prayer Warriors ran behind him, spreading blankets over the bottom halves of women so they’d be decent in their long-skirts and dresses.
The sun is bright and hazy and hot, so this young couple decides to put their feet in the water. The water is warm, so they wade farther in. Past the shells and the gritty froth of the breaking waves, the sand is soft and slick between their toes, like velvet.