01.

In the car she grabbed his hand and he held on for too long and said, My brain feels like a hurricane of emotions.

At the grocery store, before that, she said, Don’t tell anyone.

Not about anything romantic.

It was about something kind of worrisome.

02.

When we took a shower together and you were wearing your clothes and I was naked and you said, Show me 

everything you do in the shower; I want to know everything about you and I love you. And I said, I love you, but I 

stuttered and didn’t know what else to say.

Your love is platonic, I said.

Your clothes were wet and clinging to your body and your shoulders were exposed and I looked behind you at the

 wall. I wanted to scrape my teeth along the skin of your back, taking the first scarred layer into my mouth. I was 

aroused and couldn’t hide it. I thought about you in the white dress you sometimes wear after you get off work in 

the summer. I was thinking about you, eating a bowl of brie and blackberries, your mouth all midnight and purple 

and I have to look away from you sometimes, or sometimes I look through you, and I washed my forehead and 

cleared the mucus from my throat and spit at the drain. I’m trying, I said. Simulacrum haha, I said, Just kidding. 

Because really your back would have stripped the enamel from my teeth, shattering them and the atoms from my 

body splitting all away from me and draining with the nasty water I just peed in.


03.

I want to smash your face with the ice bin at work. I want to crush your body and lick your armpits and rip your 

skin apart and hold you against me in the summer and not sweat because the air conditioner is on a comfortable 

setting. I want to take a nap right now and wake up with you lying next to me. I want to erase every memory of 

you in everyone you have ever loved. I want to give you your first orgasm and then never allow you to have one 

again. I am going to put broken glass in your pillow. I am going to kiss your nose and head-butt your nose and kiss 

your bloody nose and mouth. I want my fingers on your ribs and your mouth against my neck and I am going to 

run you over with my roommate’s car. I want you to love me. I want to love you.


04.

He remembered nights in her dorm room, 3 or 4 years ago, the mosquito nets around her bed, tangled in each other, 

her friend Helen making fun of her hands, and how he told her he thought her hands were wonderful, all bony and 

too long.


05.

number of songs in iTunes with “hands” in the title: 63 / 29,859


06.

They were stopped at a stoplight and it was cold and they were wet from the pool and her mouth was against his 

neck. He struggled to keep the motorcycle up when they were stopping, but once it was completely stopped it was 

easier. She kissed his neck and he put his arm down around her leg and held her tightly. He moved his face close to 

hers but the light turned green.


07.

He went home and watched the Michael Jackson Memorial with his roommate. John Mayer was playing guitar in 

front of a casket where Michael Jackson’s dead body supposedly was and everyone was wearing sunglasses

His roommate was irate at the disrespectful nature of the program.

08.

drinking beer alone, watching episodes of The Young Ones