Emotional truth should never get a free pass. All too often, it’s a noisy intruder lashing out in blind frustration. It devotes endless hours to reconstructing bones in the desert in a vain attempt to reanimate an imaginary creature. When it thinks you’re a captive audience, it will usher you into its hail-damaged garden, assuring […]
It’s easy to argue that revenge is as a necessary form of retributive justice. The reasoning goes that if you do harm to others, then you’re probably going to be punished, either socially, legally, or physically. In this way, revenge serves as an essential cultural survival tool. It keeps everyone in line just enough to
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The ’67 Cadillac shot down a desolate prairie road and skidded into the parking lot of a diner, kicking up a wall of dust. Zeke threw the car in park, left it running, and ran inside. Whitney was placing a chicken fried steak in front of a lone customer from across the counter. Zeke grabbed
I dug for you in the deep rich soil, my hands plunging further and further into the ground, into the past, searching for traces of your soul, only to find a decayed, unreadable letter.
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In the middle of a long, hot summer, Malcolm Watkins attended the funeral of his friend Guillermo Rivas, who had overdosed on OxyContin. Malcolm didn’t know the Rivas family. Other than the priest, Guillermo’s father was the only one who spoke. He kept begging his dead son for forgiveness. He wept so much throughout the funeral
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Karen was down to 100 pounds. She wore long sleeve shirts to work to hide the marks on her arms. It had gotten so bad that one day, her boss pulled her aside and said, “Karen, do we need to talk?” ”Don’t, Ben. Life just sucks right now, you know? I’ll handle it.” And life did