For anything new to begin, something must first end. — Coldness reflected off the gray paint in the bedroom. An empty room, except for a lonely bed. An empty bed occupied by myself and my thoughts. Wrapped in white bedding, I hid my head from the void around me. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to accept. …

I needed it to be different. — “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. I nodded swiftly, a reflex before my brain could catch up. If I let myself think, If I let myself sift through memories, my entire body might shut down. My bare chest pressed against her exposed skin. She lay there…

Things can be great when you don’t know the truth. — Pizza is like sex, and I had been eating plain cheese pizza for far too long. It hits the spot in a pinch, but it’s never fully satisfying. Impossible to fully gratify cravings with the taste of unfulfillment left on the tongue. Plain, ordinary, boring, only go so far. Such…

I love air travel…but where’s a power outlet!? — When not sprinting to find a connecting gate, trying to inform an airline attendant in my broken Spanish that the previous flight did not provide me with a boarding pass, or being forced to shift two pounds from one bag to another to avoid hefty luggage fees, I generally enjoy…

Darkness steals confidence. Or maybe it emboldens it. — The voice of conversation dims with the light. Sunlight steals away the confidence of a speaker. Or maybe darkness emboldens it. Words spoken in whispers. Whispers shared only with those worthy of sharing the night. Of sharing the darkness. There’s an intimacy in darkness. …

There are always signs. You just don’t always know where to look. — Looking back, things are always so much clearer. You can see the missteps. The failures. The lies and red flags. Things are always so much clearer when not looking through the veil of love. Love has a way of distorting what you see. What you feel. …

Some meetings last a lifetime. — Sitting on the worn wood plank separating playground from playfield, I wrapped my arms around my legs and held them close to my chest. Needing a hug, six-year-old me had to embrace myself. It didn’t keep me from crying. My head bowed as I squeezed myself tighter. Smaller. There was…

What we didn’t know probably hurt us. — If you could go back in time and tell your younger self a secret, what would it be? Without getting overly philosophical, warning myself of relationship misgivings, or when to buy Amazon stocks and cryptocurrencies, I’d tell myself one simple truth: Don’t listen to everything the adults tell you. I…

Humanity isn’t lost when a home is. — The woman stopped. Something behind her on the busy sidewalk pulled at her thoughts like a toy with an invisible pull-string. Pedestrian traffic continued past the woman as she stood, hands clutching her purse. Eyes looking forward, mind looking behind, a decision was made. Turning, she sidestepped a child dragging…