31

Even though we'd never really gotten along,
I took the old pictures of my mother,
just so I could say:
"Look. That's my mother. Isn't she beautiful?"

30

This is just to say
I think I killed your pet bird
and I'm really sorry
especially since I only had one day left
before you came home from vacation.

But he just wouldn't shut up
until I let him drink bleach.

29

After all the zombies came out of the ground in northern Canada, it was only a matter of time before American life changed drastically. My mother insisted that I do my best not to worry until my high school closed. Then, when I no longer had any education to worry about, she gave me a gun and told me to learn how to use it. And so I learned how to use several types of guns. And I gave up my dream of being a doctor because medical school was one of the riskiest places on the planet, what with all the dead bodies. I became a semi-professional zombie hunter, semi because there wasn't a lot of money to be won in that particular field.

There was an entire team of us, hopeless thrill-seekers who loved nothing better than danger they controlled. It was like the roller coasters we rode as children. There was nothing more satisfying than killing something that lived only by the carnal urge to kill others. In short, the whole thing was really awesome and a whole hell of a lot more fun than being a doctor. Most of what doctors did nowadays was kill living humans who had been infected, and that was just depressing.

28--This Is For You, Nicole

We were false, even without the masks. Nobody really believed we were bank robbers, not even us. But we had made the deal that nobody got a cupcake without stealing at least a hundred thousand dollars. I had a feeling that a dozen Mexican chocolate cupcakes from our favorite bakery would be going in the trash.

The plans were so old that none of us really could remember who had made that first joke--that we would made great bank robbers. June could pick locks because of that year spent working for her grandfather, the locksmith. Mark was the Boy Scout and could tie knots better than anyone I'd ever met before. Nicole just liked guns. I don't really know why I was included in the group (had I maybe had the idea?), though I did have the dubious talent of being trusted and well-liked by authority figures. Though I didn't think my knack for getting out of parking tickets was going to help us if we got caught robbing Goliath National Bank.

27

I couldn't hardly describe this feeling. It was boredom, but then as soon as you found something to do, you couldn't even get up the energy to do it. Even though you'd done nothing all day long. And I need something to do and I need someplace to go and I need something to make me happy and--

And I would love to have a cup of coffee. I remembered the last time I had some coffee.

We celebrated Bastille Day in high style and in full regalia, even though neither of us were French, nor did we speak French, or know anyone French, or did we have any particular interest in France. We were just looking for something to do.

I drank my coffee with lots of milk and you had yours black, because you thought that made you awesome.

(It did.)

26

Some guard used his Importance Stick, the tool all guards used to make it seem as though they were in charge, against the door of my cell. I picked up my head politely, just for a change of pace. I had played this game for years (most notably with murders at the end) just to see if it would ever become fun. At least it was something to exercise my brilliant mind.

He looked gruff and surprised, like he hadn't shaven in a few days. It was likely he was losing his job. "Get up," he barked. "Grab your stuff. We're leaving now."

I rose in my regulation clothing and slipped into my boots. Then I walked out the door.

25- Psychiarty Outpatient Meets Girl Without Fears

“I’m a compulsive liar,” I whispered on her ear on the night of our first date. “Or maybe not. I could even be lying about that.”

“You’re insane,” she whispered back. But she looked at me more with admiration than disdain.

I had, quite possibly, found the most excellent girl in the world. She was crazier than I was.

She would’ve fed me to sharks, if she had the chance. She collected dictionaries and boys, but never let them kiss her on the mouth, unless they had words with thirteen letters or more. I loved her for her suspicious smile and the way she pursed her lips when I said something she thought wasn’t quite right.

24

The thing about transitions was this: they never went smoothly. There was no exception to this rule. You always tripped putting on a new pair of pants, your new haircut, always had to grow out a little before it looked quite right, and victims always spluttered and coughed before they died.

Transitioning between the new jails and the old jails was messier than dying. Ultimately, it was even messier than my own death, which was of a particularly sloppy nature.

I found something slightly ironic in the fact that they were planning on changing the old jails into schools, on leaving up the bars and covering them with cement to make walls and doors, and sending America's youth into their hallowed halls to become the future of tomorrow.

23

We lived underground as a sort of repentance. Our neighbors thought it would save them from hell. The lady across the way had seen someone jump to their death off a bridge, and moved below where we had no bridges. You and I were just sick of the bullshit.

We had both majored in political science, that's how we met. And after so long of listening to crap, and taking notes on crap from people who were full of crap and talked crap and didn't even understand the crap they were talking about, we decided we were done. And so we moved to a tunnel and made money for food by collecting old tin cans and taking them to the recycling center. It was a low-stress lifestyle.

On the other hand, living in tunnels and collecting trash meant that we'd lost our jobs, which meant we'd lost our health insurance, too. So it was sort of terrifying that time you got the flu, but we thought it might be the swine flu, and everyone sort of moved three tunnels over for a while, even though the subway rattled noisily on the other side of the wall. I stayed and we didn't die, but we weren't sure, for a while there.

And it was a good thing we never got sick of the bullshit of living underground, because things were too bright out where we could see the sun.

22

We kept our dead in the closets. I'm sorry if this is news to you.

Welcome to your new home!

21

I set fire
to the dead leaves
just inside your garden.

I never liked flowers anyway.

20

I'm bored. Okay, new game.
Whoever sticks the most stickers to the subway without falling in wins!

19

Go ahead, leave. And take your damn painting with you.
It's not like I ever loved you anyway.
And it's not like I'll cry when you take it
like I did when you left.

18

Calcium is good for your bones.
That's why I gave my collection a milk bath every night.

17

How could one expect
things to last long
in love 'twixt
a boy and a log?

Summer came
and summer was fair;
thence came winter,
the boy's hearth was bare.

Crazy with love,
cold and alone,
the boy burned the log,
to stay the harsh cold.

For days the boy wept,
unloved, unconsoled--
then again summer came,
vanquished the cold.

He once more fell in love,
he true love's song heard;
perhaps this time more prudent--
he fell in love with a bird.

16

When I was a child, I carefully kept photo albums.
Good pictures went in the books.
Bad pictures went in a box.
When the house caught on fire, my mother didn't know.
She grabbed the box.
The books left to burn.
The once-bad pictures now live as the best.

15

For most of my second-grade year, I believed that the patch of light on the wall of the hallway just outside my classroom was a portal to Narnia, because my best friend told me so. My best friend tended to know about things like these when we were eight, things like Aslan and Middle Earth and how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

As we grew up, my wholehearted faith in the ability of science fiction to enter the real world diminished, but the knowledge of my best friend on the things that mattered did not.

She could tell at a glance whether or not a bone was broken with perfect accuracy, and could judge a book by its cover--she only read good books. She could knit and purl, she could juggle up to four balls or three bowling pins, because she'd once made friends with a clown.

14

next question:
did you take this picture in my house, meg?

13

If she had been stupider, she might have figured out sooner that she was a good luck charm, which sounds counter-intuitive, but is true.

Let me explain to you the nature of good luck charms, which I think works best through example: rabbits' feet are not good luck charms. For one, a good luck charm is always a living thing, so if you have good luck underwear, forget them. You're only deluding yourself.

It takes the full-force, upfront power of a living thing to suck all of the bad luck out of a room, which is ultimately how a good luck charm works. I mean, think of that rabbit. He must have been one poor bastard to get his foot cut off like that.

Bad luck is very scientific, in that way. Something of a Murphy's Law version of the way darkness is the absence of light, good luck is, quite simply, the absence of bad luck. Band luck floats about in every crevasse of the world (and luckily for all of humankind, is very capricious about choosing where to land).

12

This way to the river
this way to the sea.
The fields return the sentiment
with a doleful look.

There's nothing more frightening
than a country thunderstorm
with nothing between you and civilization
except a bike and the hell-bent forces of nature.

And when you turn out the light
it's the blackest dark you've ever seen
and things are so terrifyingly loud
--so loud you couldn't hear anything coming.

11

That day, as we went to water the horses
your little sister wanted to lock up the bikes.
No, you said
--the bike lock was such a hassle
and nobody was around to steal, anyway--
and when we got back
the bikes were still there, as expected.

Someone had stolen our bike lock.

10

After the first wave of the disease, everyone stopped being afraid and what we had once regarded as symptoms--the eternally runny nose, the loss of feeling in your lips--became mere side effects to the overall goal: the idea that you never needed to sleep.

Me, I was glad that I had that whatever-it-was twist in my genetics that kept me "unhealthy"--immune from catching the pandemic. I used sleep as a kind of medicine, the way God meant it to be used, to give my brain and emotions a rest.

Scientists were working quite literally night and day to "cure" people like me.

After the initial wave, they began to segregate the schools, claiming initially that they didn't want the disease to spread. This was nonsense, of course; the more the disease spread, the more capitalism thrived, the more hours existed in the day.

9

There's something about poetry you find incredibly hot, though you'll never admit it. Whenever I am writing poetry, you are attracted to me.

Usually it is then that you make your move, so I can never finish any poems when I am around you. That makes being a poet very difficult, because we live together.

One time when I was writing a poem about ducks and swings and things that are blue, you came up behind me and kissed the back of my neck. For a moment or three I just kept writing, but you were distracting so eventually I gave up.

One thing led to another and eventually we made our way from my desk to your bed, half dressed in the way that such things tend to happen when you are young and still appreciate the lack of chaperons. In the heat of a moment you murmured or moaned that you loved me.

8

We knew we'd probably never see each other again as you left for London.
That's why I didn't pretend to cry this time.

7

"Julia, did you put the leftovers in the fridge?"
"I don't remember."
It's been like this ever since she got hit on the head with that shovel.

6

I named my fish after the guy who killed a president.
But I say the Pledge of Allegiance every day at school
so I figure that's okay anyway.

5

We read by lantern
which cast the room in gloomy green
even though we were only awake
because we were afraid of ghosts.

4

Out of 1.7 million volumes,
we both needed the same book.
Kids,
I met your father
when I stole it from his dorm room.

3

we got eaten by a giant, giant worm
that glowed in the dark.

2

Mother said she wished
that nine months before I was born
she had gone bowling, instead.

1

sure I love you,
cross my heart
and hope you die.