Tag: Patchwork

  • Aftermath New Girl 13: The Puma

    I told this story already. If you have read Teardrop Road then you know of the time that I broke with reality and had my manic storm. But to put a thing in context is to understand it. To set a thing next to the things around it is to see it for the first time.…

  • Aftermath New Girl 12: A Future with Muttons

    I’m sitting in a faux leather chair with a reclining problem. I’m pretty sure it was the reason this chair was in a dumpster when Johnson and I found it. It is supposed to recline when you lean back and push the arms. Supposed to lean right back and flatten out. Well it doesn’t, but…

  • Aftermath New Girl 11: Johnson

    Now I’m living with Sapphire. We have broken up and we are still sleeping in the same bed. It’s my bed. She doesn’t have one and we are just simmering in a hellish pattern of trying to ignore each other and fighting to get out of our situation. It is the beginning of the fall…

  • Aftermath New Girl 10: The Nightmare

    Sapphire and I started to rot almost instantly. All the things we had together before Angel had festered, and it became clear to both of us that we were staying together because of familiarity. Just wait. I’m going to give you an example. Just give me a minute. This one thing first. She worked second…

  • Aftermath New Girl 9: Legends

    Angel and I didn’t survive Christmas Break. She didn’t kick me out when we broke up, but I was no longer being watched. I was much of the time trapped at her house. When Bekah showed up to pick me up one day, I was… well, I was at home. I can’t tell you what…

  • Aftermath New Girl 8: Second Christmas

    The second Christmas after Bekah entered my life is nothing but a huge confusing blur of gifts, pain, love, and more confusion. I remember four Christmas celebrations. I don’t remember what order they came in. I don’t remember everything about them. All I can say is that it all started with a missing 250 dollars.…

  • Aftermath New Girl 7: Angel

    I was walking back from dropping off Sapphire and I kicked it on the street. I was not looking for this. It was looking for me. That was when I knew something had to change. Sapphire and I had gotten into a fight. I don’t remember about what, and she had stormed off. Had marched…

  • Aftermath New Girl 6: Coward

    Here, let me try to describe what it was like to live in Kentwood the year after that summer. Let’s start by saying, this was not my first choice of dorms. I wanted Wells again. Well, I was supposed to want Wells again. It is where Sapphire and I had gotten together, and we put…

  • Aftermath New Girl 5: The Weekend

    One day, while having sex with Sapphire, I called out Bekah’s name. We both ignored it. We acted like it never happened and we finished. We laughed and played, then I excused myself to go into the bathroom, and in that shitty little bathroom in Burg and mine’s shitty little apartment, I wept. I cried…

  • Aftermath New Girl 4: Grand and Grant

    The summer after Sapphire and I got together, I had no place to live. The plan was to pick up more hours at Pizza Hut and make that work somehow. But out of nowhere came Burg with a plan. He was living in Columbia and going to college at MU. He wanted a change of…