Time flies between Boren and Minor. That’s where mom and pops live. Their building is gray too. Slabs of Soviet style concrete. Patches of lighter gray where management has spray-painted over graffiti. Someone’s scribbled over the light gray in a final affront. “Next time use 409. Spray paint looks bad.” Jorjian grimaces. It seems a…

Figures hovering above, and figures hovering below. The complex is like a jungle tonight. The rain beats the mud even deeper into the pores of cement. Leaves sag like aged breasts. An onion, discarded from someone’s putrid Thriftway shopping bag, grows its own family of others just like it; opal, pungent, sterile. And in this…

Holed up in our rooms afraid to leave, afraid of wicked. She lay screaming under a dead car, dripping in its grease. Naked from the waist up, in neon green shorts. “Sean?” “Sean?” It wasn’t Sean. It was Jorjian. She was going to change her laundry. “Do you want to come in and take a…

Things had been queer since Kurt had left. Words seemed unjustified. Sounds seemed cruel. Dogs were rabid as they lay their pups of betrayal. She hoped she could get a ride from the station that morning. Maybe she could call Gunnar. But Jorjian knew that would be no use. He left her with a hole…

She went out to have an O’Dooles at the Redwood Tavern last night. In an attempt to make this okay, normal, alright. Jorjian spent most of her time sipping the luke-warm fizz, wondering why she couldn’t have just one sip of Georgia’s bourbon and sweet-tea. Maurice saw Terrell, and Lewis saw Adam and she saw…

There was a stabbing on the hill yesterday. Jorjian Brown couldn’t help but wonder what that meant for her. Was she selfish for wondering such thoughts? Wondering if she was going to get mugged too? Stabbed in the neck. Throat slit like a pig? How much blood there must have been and yet at five-thirty…

If she were the age you were, when you were her age, then things would have been different. She would speak like an angel. She would walk with a fork in her step, a bow in her chippered limp. But she is not an angel. Jorjian Brown knew this. There were things she had done.…

The heat impregnates Jorjian Brown. Like a car-jacker at night. Taking advantage of what isn’t his to begin with. “Let me out!” a neighbor cries from Olive and Summit. “B*tch. Let me out!” Or was it a meow? There were small cats that permeated the floors below her. Not kittens, but little tiny cats. They…

Gunshots on the hill tonight. Things like this keep happening. Weird sh*t. Jorjian called the police. She was the only one that called. Five shots and her knees were knocking. It must be her meds. She didn’t feel safe. Like that girl in second grade who got shot through the wall in her apartment. Like…

She wonders what his hands must feel like. Beyond rough. Beyond the slip of her skirt. A tattoo in this crease. A nail missing here. Hair like barnacles. Words slurped foam spewed between a layer of plastic. “Don’t mind him. He’s got that thing in. To whiten his teeth.” “I’ve never done that before.” Jorjian…