Lloyd in Dumas, Texas #7 (Redemption)

"You little fucking shithead, if ye ain't your father's boy then ye prolly sprang from the loins of the devil hisself. Yer idle and full of meanness and yer gonna cover this world in shit an ugliness jus like your daddy before ye." That's what momma was like. Used ta lock me in the attic when she had a mind to and sometimes she'd just leave for days when she got in one a her moods. I'm gonna be differnt than that with my kids. I'm gonna try ta make this broken world a little less lonesome for them; try to see to it they're not as lost as their daddy is. Try to make the miraculous mystery of life everlastin hard and real for them.

Tomas in Ensenada, Mexico #6 (Comic and the absurd)

Came home and found a giant pile of steaming human shit on my mattress. Went to the icebox to have a beer and calm down and found a piece of paper with a drawing of arched legs with flaming red genitals in the center with an X through them drawn violently with Permanent Marker. There was a caption that read: "I hope it was worth it!" Guess I'm never going to learn to keep my fucking dick in my pants or my stupid fucking mouth shut. (Jeff James)

Frederick in St Paul, Minnesota #5 (Banality of daily life)

These two younger guys wearing orange hunter's ski masks broke into our apartment when I was at work. My wife came back from her mother's and surprised them. One of them shot her in the stomach and the other started screaming at him "What the fuck are you doing? Let's just get the fuck out of here." She's in intensive care but she's been conscious a few times and was able to give a description of them. (Josh Black)

Jeannie in Pocotella, Idaho #4 (Violence)

How do we kill this world in ourselves? My husband is upstairs, shot through the throat with a revolver and my boy is drowned in the bathtub. I'm sitting in the driveway with the car running and the snow pouring from the white winter sky thinking hard about the pathless road to God. Salvation. (Mark Johnson)

Micah in Summit, KY #3 (Violence)

Aint never had a fuckin hard day in your life, have ye? Never been beaten like a dog and had your face ground down in the gravel till you beg for the kind of mercy that doesn't exist in this broken world. I sure as fuck have and I thank the Allmighty for ever beatin I ever got; beat all tha sentiment and worldliness and hope out of me. My stepdaddy used ta beat me every day jus for exercise and that brutality jus became a part of my life. I kindly wondered if God might come and fill all tha ugly spaces inside me but he jus never did, now I'm out there somewheres in the cold night hurtin someone like I've been hurt. (Harry Cloud)

Alexandria in Rennes, France #2 (Sexuality)

There's a lamp at the edge of our bed. I'm sitting next to it with my panties off, smoking a cigarette and waiting for him to come home. I anticipate the savage pleasure that his body will bring me and I slowly glide my ring and middle fingers in and out of my secret wound until I throb with ecstasy. I hear him open the front door and I put the the cigarette out, prop myself up on my elbows and ache for his caress. Joy of man's desiring. (Christopher Feltner)

Stuart in Augusta, Georgia #1 (Dreams)

Had a dream last night that I was back in my grandfather's old house. I was asleep in the bed in the basement and my grandmother who died 6 years back slowly descended the stairs with a vase that didn't have anything in it. I tried to speak to her as she approached but I couldn't produce anything other than these paine, moaning sounds and I realized that these sorrowful calls were my grief over her death. She laid down in bed next to me and touched my face and I started crying softly. Overwhelmed with my loss, I leapt out of bed, opened the sliding glass door and ran out into the muggy summer night until I reached the banks of the creek that bordered their land. First light was breaking through the night sky and about a hundred yards East there were 3 dogs tearing viciously at a dead body that looked a little like our neighbor. I jumped in that creek and never came back up for air. (Microwave Windows)