Rolling My Eyes

Tommy knows the day because he can remember something of it. Not the whole day or anything, but what he does remember, he see just like he is at the movies. Third row and centre, staring at the back of his family's heads, even his own. Sometimes he wonders if that makes it a false memory. Momma has never described the blood splatters on the wall, the spit coming out of his father's mouth, though this is what Tommy remembers the most. He doesn't know why he standing beside them in the middle of the living room, when his father ordered him to his bedroom to nap, because the memory begins with him sitting beside his father on the couch. Tommy also remembers on the way to his bed, touching his mother’s blood while his own raced straight to his heart, so scared he'd be caught, pressing his whole palm in the mess on the wall quickly as he walked by, but he wasn’t. Momma tells him that it happened a few weeks before his Dad was set to move out, when the little one-bedroom apa...

Prowl, just prowl and dig it up and eat it all. Before the meal is me. Someday the meal will be me. Dead or alive though, them fuckers gonna have to work real hard to get me. I wear my shadow like it's the real me. Merge and blur, baby. I can do that. So come at me, yo. Bring all your Brittanys, Bitches. Let’s do this thing. I don't even know you fuckers, but all you fuckers think you've known me for so long. Oh, my God. Like seriously. It's strange. Like forever..... so, here, let me tell you my tales of this and that and tit for tat and why would I tell anyone that? Weasels, all those small tasty, stolen morsels between your chattering teeth. Yum, yum, like bubble gum until the taste is gone, spit them out and don't look to see where it lands. Tonight let me Show and Tell about... who? Hey all you loose-lip fuckers out there, I don't care about truths not your own. So you get no limbs from me, but go ahead, air your laundry, and their laundry and the...

Weekly Journal Entry English-9b Mr. Bates Your name here Q-What do you think is the best thing and the worst thing about living in a small town? The very worst part, I have found, of living in a small town is the older you get, the more people you get to know. Like at first my world must have been pretty small, just Mom and Dad and my older sister. Same for all of us. Then maybe a few people your parents know are suddenly there. If you're lucky, a kid or two lives next door. And if you're a super lucky kid like me, you get to meet people like Baby and Princess Poo-Poo too. But then it is like BAM when you start school. All of a sudden you know 30 people your own age. Then 30 more and 30 more of all ages. By third grade you know everyone in the school. And some of their parents and some of their friends and the teachers, the people on your streets. It just keeps going on and on. There's 600 kids at this high school, there were only 200 in my elementary. So many new ...

Minnie is 14. She likes wearing bright red lipstick and getting high. Right now, Tommy is arguing with her. "Vitto will be waiting for me then." "He can wait longer," she tells him. "Tell him there was too many cops following you around or something." "Yeah," Tommy says. "That might work. Vitto would believe that. Three different cops stopped me on the street this week." "What?" Minnie almost shouted. "Oh, Tommy. They are on to you." “No, they aren't." But she knew. "For sure they are. Listen. Meet me outside the pool hall at 9:30. I'll havethe dope then, Tommy." “No. I really should go see Vitto first.” He kisses her quickly on the forehead and then runs home to make himself some Kraft Dinner for supper. When he walks in the front door, there is Momma with a bottle of whiskey tucked between her legs, her head rolled to the back of the couch, her mouth open. "What the fuck, Mom...

When it's springtime, that's when it all flows back into her. When she can pick up the guitar again. Every song she has ever sold has been written in the spring. It's not really surprising that when you coop up, every chance you get, from the weather 5 months of the year that you get to know the ugliness of people, of yourself. That first winter living together, the first time she sold a song, she told him over dinner, her smile so wide, her hands a-flutter, until she realised he wasn't listening, just muttering, "Uh-huh. Mmmhmm." She snapped, What, Daniel? This is the best day of my life... And he told her, Listen, I don't give a shit what happened today. Every day is always the best day of your life. All you do is chirp, chirp, chirp and I wasn't even listening. You really screwed up my day. He was mad at her for not ironing his work clothes right again. Didn't she realise he got ready in the dark, so she could continue sleeping and he needed he...

She hasn't told anyone. Not her friends, co-workers, not what's left of her family: a brother, an Aunt Mo, a father in a nursing home. Her father would be the easiest because he wouldn't understand anyway. He rarely remembers his own name these days, three months since he has remembered hers. But then there's the nurses, the cleaning staff, the other visitors visiting. What if they heard her? What if that reverend heard her? No thanks, that's too many people and any audience that includes God is far too big for her. But it screams up from her belly at the worst times. When her mouth is full of muffin, or when she's in the grocery store's meat department, or at a red light during rush hour, too many times to count at work. Swallowing a scream burns the whole body. She's popping into bathrooms a lot more these days because if a scream can't roar out the mouth, its gonna leak out of somewhere. Come to think of it, her ears have been hurting lately too,...

It started happening right from the first one. Jack, that's his name. Well, not his real name either, but that should have been his name, so that's what I'm gonna to call him here. He wasn't all that good looking, he had a lot of pimples, but he had his man voice and it was deep and slow. Really easy to listen to. Talking to him on the phone was the best thing about him. I still love talking on the phone. With anyone. I guess that's why I'm honestly here. I know it sounds silly, but I wonder if that was the start of where I went wrong, ten years ago talking to Jack. I was learning the arousals of conversation, when I should have been learning to arouse boys. He made out with Emerald Johnson. Forever why? I still ask myself that. I remember him making all kinds of weird and nasty jokes about her—because she was weird and nasty—and then he went and kissed her? The last one said he was going to leave his wife for me. A week after we started dating, and two weeks a...

Along the path, she can run the length of her small city and back again. Everyone at home knows that when she says she is going for a run that she won't be back for around two hours. They do not know it takes her far less time to make the run, but some of her friends do. Sometimes she's worried she has told the wrong people. Today, as she does her warm-up stretches in the grass, she watches from behind her sunglassed eyes as another woman walks down the park path. The woman is tall and willowy, wearing a faded flowered skirt, a newer brown shirt, cinched at the waist. Her long brown hair is slightly disheveled; maybe. Brown, sensible sandals on her feet. A modern day hippie. That woman probably has only sensible thoughts in her head too. Drinks homemade carrot and wheatgrass juice in the mornings. She is probably everything Jolene has ever wanted to be. She has never wanted to be this tiny, blonde-bodied shell that she is housed in. A pat on the head and warm, sweet smiles. F...