Chloe in Kenner, Lousiana #181 (Love)

I heard a cat calling out in agony and fear and hunger in the alley behind the Dollar General and I went back inside to buy it something to eat. It nuzzled my hand as I fed it and I felt the sharp pain of sorrow and the almost unbearable loneliness of sympathy. Feeding isn't saving. Saving requires a more drastic sacrifice from both parties. Then I understood our love, Alex and I wondered if the earth is my home and if the melancholy in our palsied hearts called us toward union or distinction. (Morgan Garrett)

Leo in Aurora, Colorado #180 (Transcendence)

I closed my eyes when I was driving last night. I took my hands off of the steering wheel and my car veered off the road and into a creek. I got out of my car and was waste deep in that freezing black water and for a moment I felt a kind of rabid peace and liberation that I'd longed for but never known. I looked up and saw planets and stars and universes and the whitest eternities full of purity and divinity.
God. (Morgan Garrett)

Analucia in Saltillo, Mexico #179 (Love)

I've washed your filthy feet. I've cleaned the vomit off of your face. I've peeled you out of your pissy pants. I've dressed your wounds. I love you and you don't love me. I love you and I'm sorry for you. Bearing lovelessness is the great tribulation, perdition and illness and I see the broken human animal traveling through the desert for thousands of miles hungering without knowing what could ease their hunger and slake their thirst. I love you. (Morgan Garrett)

Janice in Wheeling, WV #178 (Self Evaluation)

I'm not getting any younger. Looked in the mirror and saw an unfulfilled old lady longing for something but being so divorced from herself she doesn't even know what she needs. My boyfriend and I eating at some sit down chain restaurant on Friday night, coming home to watch TV and drink some white wine. Going to the beach for vacation every summer. Keeping my house clean and my yard trimmed. Watching my weight, exercising and eating healthy. If there isn't more to this life, then it's not worth living. (Morgan Garrett)

Elmer in Dwarf, KY #177 (Violence)

We was drinkin with this slimy old man we met a Ducky's in a Super 8 Motel room. He offered ta buy the liquor; hell, if someone's buyin we're drinkin. Prolly thought he was gonna have a fuck and suck with my girl an I, buy our assholes an mouths with a little Wild Turkey 101. We was all sittin on tha bed getting perty tight an I had this feelin come over me. I watched him leerin at my girl's crotch, had his hand inchin tward my thigh. I had this feelin come over me. All the men in this world jes wantin to fuck and fuck forever. He got up ta piss an I unplugged the TV and follered him. He was lettin loose a that foul stream a piss an I lifted that TV up an caved in his skull with it. He dropped to tha floor an I kicked him in tha face with my work boots until you couldn't recognize him. Came to myself, sent my girl out inta tha night so's she wouldn't get in no trouble and then called the cops.

Someone like me's not fit ta live with decent people. I took two bucks from his wallet and went to tha vendin machine; got some Barbecue Chips and Strawberry Faygo to snack on while I waited fer tha cops. (Morgan Garrett)

Jason In Hialeah, Florida #176 (Self Evaluation)

Castle in ruins and soldiers at the gate. Poison in my belly and a knife in my heart. When I feasted, I starved. When I drank wine, I thirsted. When I died, I rose like a phallus into some kind of frighteningly authentic everlasting life. (MOrgan Garrett)

Anatole in Ely, Nevada #175 (Self Evaluation)

God will speak today. He will speak through my falsehood, my vanity, my throttled body hanging from the limbs of a birch tree. He will speak about the fallen creature called man and He will free his tortured servants from their mortal bodies. (Morgan Garrett)