From: The Secret Year

"I want to call you. I just looked up your family's number. I'm pretty sure it's yours because the address is on the flats, near the Higgins Farm Bridge. Would you want me to call you? I feel so cut off from you. It seems crazy that I don't even know how you are. Sometimes I love the fact that nobody knows about us. We have this secret, so juicy I can feel my mouth dripping. Other times, like now, it seems stupid to hide this way.

It's later. I just talked to you. You didn't sound mad. Your voice felt good in my ear."

Jennifer R. Hubbard

Napped From the Vault: The Offspring

Sorry about the sporadic posting. I seem to be entering one of those melancholy phases where nothing is as interesting as it once was.

You get that?

I've also been time-traveling via a collection of mix CDs I unearthed in my basement. Perhaps this audio meditation is fueling my dejection?

What evs. It'll pass. Always does. In the meantime, I offer you a songnapping from the nineties. Damn, I love(d) these guys:

"Late at night she knocks on my door.
She's drunk again and looking to score.
Oh, I know I should say no, but
it's kind of hard when she's ready to go.
I may be dumb, but I'm not a dweeb.
I'm just a sucker with no self esteem."

The Offspring

Apropos

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
at the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

James Wright

From: "Tickle Me Pink"

"Pray for the people inside your head,
for they won't be there when you're dead."

Tickle Me Pink
Johnny Flynn

From: Bloom

"I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine.

I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever."

Elizabeth Scott

P.S. I've been reading books on the Kindle, and I cannot believe the number of typos. Is this the standard for Kindle books? Were these mistakes most likely in the hard copies too?

From: Handcuffs

"I should probably explain about my ex.

'Take your shoes off Parker.'

I probably should explain, but I don't have the energy.

His TV is on, his laptop is defragging, there is a CD playing over speakers angled throughout the narrow bedroom. He's wearing headphones, but the cord is dangling, not plugged into anything. Kind of like me."

Bethany Griffin