There was no requirement to march, they reminded us.
Who can bend the will of the heavens, after all, to demand the fate of a man fall this way or that?
I hated that heady talk that those talking heads got up to on the TV. In lieu...

"Now, Tony, I know you don't give a fuck." The Manager's head rested there, just above my cubicle. His hands looked like they'd wrung out a bundle of invisible snakes, being crushed evermore under his grip. "The client thinks he has sway with you, said you'd take care of it....

There’s something relieving in having cast the dice, watching them tumble over the great green felt. A lovely human on your arm, if you were running well, something sweeter to think about. Otherwise, the cigar smoke and cheap colognes swept over your nostrils and you kept watching those cubes toy...

It came as a child. Not that we knew that at the time. The size it already was would have convinced anyone otherwise.
It set itself up on the side of town closest to the school and the old carpet store. Every night it went back to that pit...

The Almighty Dollar! The Church of the Coin!
Down with the Scholar, Join the Unjoined!
In Banks as in Heaven, Thy Balance Fulfilled
Lest fate turn ye beggar & find empty your Tills!

 "How the hell'd you do it?" a plainclothes asked me.
"Intuition", I heard myself say, coupled with a smile and the ignition of a cigarette.
What I didn't say is that to recognize something means to have seen it before. 
The scene now having been fully cased,...

Do lifelines fray? Must we change them out every now and then?
He looked down at his journal. It sounded like an emo album lyric.

Comedy was always his lifeline. It was still his go-to entertainment, but it didn't tickle the way it used to. Nothing shone as brightly as...

"Part of being a grown man is building dependencies on stuff."

"I like that. That's a chronic aberration."

"You know, I think babies would be happier if they took caffeine pills."

"The only person being ruined is my doctor."

- The same person.

You read about it in the paper that morning, now you see it everywhere you go. 
The windows are tinted, the puddles are portals, for that face still sends ripples down spine and below.
It calls out in winds that the clouds couldn't touch, in songs with no...

“It doesn’t really affect me,” she said, pumping another load of vanilla syrup into her cup. Then came the caramel.

“See? All my classmates can’t drink coffee without making this face,” she said, making the face.

I nodded. My cousin was young, why poke holes in a burgeoning confidence? She had far...