Alexander Helmke

My counselor, when I started seeing him two years ago said it is okay to withhold certain things from my parents. When I am trying to be honest with them is when they are skeptical about my life.

We knew the house by the smoke. We knew the house from high school. We did not need to look at the coat-hangered address swinging from a tree.

Do you ever think of what your younger self would say to your current one? Mine, he comes out and tells me You broke off your marriage?

We tell each other our ages. She is surprised that I am younger by three years, she doesn’t know how she feels about that but I tell her I have a lot of grey hair but don’t worry tonight I can act old. I can always act.

The bartenders were the oldest people in the place. It was a wood themed bar. Maybe all of them are when we are passed out or not paying attention.

I read a book that said there are locations where people can go anywhere without the smell of cigarettes. It was a quiz. If you said yes then you were closer to an upper middle class lifestyle. In a twisted way I smoke to represent my class.

Please someone. Post about my smile, my anachronistic fashion sense. Are my glasses a brand of a famous writer? I don’t know how I feel about that.

I told Jesus to go to hell and then cried to the sound of my crying. It was liberating; something was lifted. I’ve read that he carried something heavy somewhere important.

We talk about recycling and coming generations, how mine and the following will be healthy. He is skeptical about global warming and speaks through his remaining teeth.

Once I was at a music venue and the woman next to me asked if I wanted something from the bar — I didn’t want a drink (I told her oh I’m okay), but wanted to talk to her — and I never saw her again; she never came back; I’m not used to these social cues.

In the Metra station I had a feeling I would see someone I knew; sometimes, I hate knowing innate things about to happen in my life. A guy touches my backpacked shoulder, a friend-cum-acquaintance that graduated high school a year after me. We sit together on the train.

Except: a couple gets out of their respective cars in the coffee shop parking lot. She embraces him. No, wait—kisses him, jumps, straddles him like she did on those old department store rides powered by coins—and this is the most beautiful thing you have seen in a while.