I feel great sadness over my anger at your continued presence.

You fail to avoid an old coworker on street, and just shake your head in greeting. It’s been that kind of year.

Beloved by millions—and a nasty piece of work.

Hurtling toward the last curve, picking up speed and terrified.

He drove past the old house on the way to the liquor store. The familiar bay window above the porch, where she used to sit waiting when he came home. Halfway down the block he had to pull over. He couldn’t go forward, and he couldn’t go back.

He said, we don’t use “food colors” for culinary enterprises, or “asian” typefaces for asian ones. That would be akin to performing in drag. We use food-adjacent colors.

This just in: internet preferable to all previous human endeavor.

I had always respected them, expecting nothing in return, which there wasn’t.

This rote deflection of even the faintest praise isn’t humility, but a putrid species of narcissism.

We miss you terribly, without the comfort of knowing our love and respect was reciprocated.

He was someone who could at the same time be held in the highest esteem and lowest contempt.

With age he bore an increasing air of anger and resentment, as if unconsciously expressing the collective protest of dying cells.

Watching your neighbor doing Sunday yard work you can almost see the self-righteous thought bubbles about the value of hard work floating above his head, played in his dad’s voice.

This person is part of the person that was that person. You don’t get to choose the part that’s convenient.