There is a framed photograph on Lila’s bedside table that she hasn’t yet had the energy, or perhaps the inclination, to get rid of.
When I was twelve years old, I was buried alive within the grounds of a construction site.
The idiot box: my first hazy television-related memory, bathed in the blue-tinged glow of a cathode-ray tube, hails from when I was about three and therefore a complete idiot myself.
If I close my eyes, I can still experience it through the mind of the 26-year-old I was on my third tour with the Black Caps, when I felt hopelessly lost off the field and was not yet wanted on it.
No matter what your talent, or how hard you work, there’s an element of chance in everything that happens.
This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him.
In the chastening chill of a dazzling October morning, James Becker stands on the footbridge, hip hitched against the handrail, rolling a cigarette.
Somewhere on Earth was a village where spring faded into autumn, and after autumn, spring returned once more.
So I drive until first light and only stop when the plain turns black and there’s nothing between us and the horizon but clinkers and ash.
Later, when the storm has passed, everyone will talk about the destruction it left behind, though no one, not even the king himself, will remember that it all began with a single raindrop.
I never asked for visions, I was one. In my future, I see myself regal and glorious, luminescent with the glow of my god.
When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games.