There, Too—

For all my life, and forevermore,

I will be a chickenshit motherfucker—

scared of winning and losing alike,

fearful of change and stagnation,

just scared to death until I die.

And if there's reincarnation

or some sort of afterlife,

I'd be a yellow-bellied coward

there, too.

Man vs. Bear

I know I’m a little late weighing in on this, but if I had to pick between a man and a bear, I’d actually pick the man.

Not because I trust him more than a bear, but because my husband is a huge animal lover and just couldn’t harm a bear.

But he has killed a man and would do it again for a lot less than someone fucking with me.

I think he’d even let me pick how that man dies. He says poison can be less suspicious, depending. Bullets are faster. But I don’t know—something about strangling or drowning someone to death for me just seems so romantic.

Then again, it might be more fun to make the guy dig his own grave first.

Nice to have options, though.

mosquitoes

golden rule

I believe in the Golden Rule,
but only if you go first—
treat me the way you want
to be treated before
I do a damn thing.

Burn Out

Can drinking a gallon of sweet tea be self-care? The answer might surprise you.

Actually, a lot of things can be good for you, on the right day, if you don’t look at them too closely.

Like screaming motherfucker in your car over and over.

Killing a housefly with your bare hand.

Reading a letter from a friend.

Deleting a distracting app from your phone.

Telling a coworker, for the second time this week, that the meetings are killing you.

Cutting the sleeves off a T-shirt from a place you haven’t worked at in four years.

Because maybe you’re a cutoff-sleeve tank gal now, but there’s only one way to know, and that’s to try.

Or deciding tonight is a hot-dog night and your husband can adjust.

Or not starting a fight by saying, “Just a reminder: you can cook too.”

Sometimes self-care is swallowing the mean little sentence whole.

Because he can,

and he could,

and he sometimes does.

Letting inside thoughts stay inside. Not airing every feeling the second it arrives. Trying anger or disgust on in different sizes before committing to one, if at all.

There are a million ways to keep yourself from catching fire and not burning out.

Might as well try them all.

Mistaken for Play

A reminder: we can chase dragons

without needles; disappear

into holes once mistaken for play.

’Twas neither fun nor game today.

That version of me still lives

behind the Ethan Allen sofa

without a cushion cover,

twelve years old and capable, briefly,

of empathy, sympathy, kinship—

god-awful hours in digital depths

we are warned of yet never heed.

God damn how that spirit gripped my wrist,

wrestled me to the dirty floor, dog hair

matted into the shag, and as an adult

I can still be there

when everyone else is dead.

Totally Cooked.

Do you think in 1797, when early feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft and journalist William Godwin welcomed their child into the world, they thought, yeah, look at this ultimate nepo baby?

Then, when their beautiful child Mary married Percy Bysshe Shelley, major English Romantic poet, were they pleased because their grandchildren would be the ultimate, ultimate, major, major nepo babies?

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, essentially inventing science fiction after Lord Byron—another giant of the Romantic movement—dared a group of friends to each write a ghost story.

But Google’s AI summary of other people’s questions says this is all just nepo baby shit.

I suppose no matter what you do, who you know, or how you live, you’ll never control how people interpret it. 

Eventually every complicated life gets flattened into discourse.

You might as well like yourself; just consider all the time you are going to spend with you.

flexi-sexual

Want to be high all the time,

Cherry sucker in my mouth,

Poppin’ out with that wet, loud

Smack, like swatting the nose

Of a bad dog. A downward dog,

Ass up in the air, invitation to make

A happy baby, legs up, misbehavin’,

Breathing that fire breath,

Kiss lips stained red, sticky-sweet with cherry flavor,

a 99-cent cherry sucker

I was sucking and sucking, my cheeks hollow,

Hallowed as the Lord’s name, which I have said

More than once.

banana bread

hovering close

No matter how hard my day is, I remember there is a woman on Facebook who posted:

“Win: I’m learning to be more Christ-like in my suffering.”

Her husband, parents, and in-laws all fucking liked it.

Prime Eye-fuckin' Time

On this blessed day, in which every errand presented prime eye-fuckin’ time, we must celebrate and hold it holy.

Our festivities began at the library, where I watched a woman mount a crotch-rocket motorcycle in the lot. Her helmet still gleamed sweaty from the hot asphalt when she pointed at the books in my arms and said, “That’s quite a range there.”

Friends, I was holding a literal children’s adventure novel alongside a slutty erotic retelling of Sleeping Beauty where Prince Charming wakes the princess with his dick.

I shrug and laugh. “I contain multitudes.” Then wink at the bookish biker butch sliding a hardback into her backpack, who probably understands. From my car, I watched her straddle the heavy machine, roar it to life, and ride off. Her hair was probably still damp when she shoved it, steaming, into that hard plastic helmet.

Then off to Lowe’s to look at showers, where Nora, in her lil blue vest and name tag, bounced up and asked if I was finding what I needed. Why, Nora, how did you know I needed you?

My husband scribbles down SKUs and prices while Nora shows me how the display’s drain cover unhooks like a fucking bra. “It’s a really popular model,” she says. “Little pricey.”

And I say, “I can afford it,” feeling like I’m swinging big clit energy while Nora’s male coworkers keep calling her on the radio to help cut blinds and make keys.

But she keeps saying, “I’m with someone right now. It’s going to take awhile.”

Friends, she was with me. Taking her time with me like I deserved time taken. She asked if I had a favorite shower brand like I’m a woman who remodels her bathroom every six months. Ma’am, last week I didn’t even know I was a bathroom-remodel girl. Next week, I could become anything she wants.

And at the grocery store, beneath the cold dairy air and the yeasty warmth drifting from the bakery, some slender, tall, braces-smile babe followed me from aisle to aisle in her Hello Kitty hoodie like we’d made our grocery lists together, knee to knee at the kitchen table.

We collided in the bread aisle while I attempted to scale the mountain of shelves for sourdough, positioned far beyond the reasonable reach of any five-foot-two woman. She flashed that silver grin and asked if I needed help.

Yes.

Her sinful little wrist peeked from her pink cuff as she stretched high enough to reach where I could barely see. “This one?” she asked. But the bottom of her shirt lifted too, revealing dark skin and a dangling belly-button ring, and I was liable to say yes to anything she asked.

My sourdough secured in my cart, she applied root beer Lip Smackers to her lips and wandered off, leaving the faint sugary scent trailing behind her while my vanilla-bean chapstick burned a hole in my pocket. Together, we could’ve made a fine soda-fountain float with a single kiss.

Oh, a delightful endeavor indeed, crossing each lovely line from my to-do list with a solid grade-A eye-fucking. To move through fluorescent lighting and asphalt heat and freezer aisles feeling not invisible, not ridiculous, but vividly, publicly alive.

To flirt. To look. To be looked at in return.

And perhaps, deep in my bones, to believe I am still the kind of woman strangers notice too.

Depravity, NOW!

Respectfully, I masturbated three times today, which is a wild hero’s journey for someone who thought they were asexual not that long ago.

Today, I ordered a vibrator and an SPF from Amazon. They’ll arrive in the same box. I guess my forties are about really committing to new experiences.

The joke lands harder if you know I used to be militantly anti-SPF. I still can’t reliably make myself wear it—not the ones I’ve tried, anyway. Same with sex toys. I’d attempted both before, but could never quite convince myself either experience was worth the effort.

Granted, for an alarmingly long time, the only sex toy I owned was a glass dildo ribbed with little red hearts, gifted to me by a girl who is dead now.

Maybe—and I hate admitting this—grief simply wasn’t compatible with trying to get off using a strangely nouveau objet d’art. Also: ew, dildos.

Like, I’m not sure how I feel about penis generally, but here’s a facsimile, somehow harder, colder, and faintly sentimental. It was never functional in any meaningful sense from the start.

Maybe everything I’ve decided “isn’t for me” was actually just introduced to me under the worst possible conditions.

The thickest, greasiest SPF imaginable. The coldest, saddest cock.

Honestly, that theory explains a surprising amount of my life.

I started off on the wrong foot with almost everything. But I don’t know. It’s okay now. Or maybe not okay exactly—just more okay than it used to be. And sometimes “more okay” is a legitimate spiritual milestone.

Is any of this healthy? Hard to say.

I'm not seeing a therapist and don't want to. The last one suggested I have an affair, and the one before that convinced me to divorce my first husband. At this point, I’m afraid the next one will escalate accordingly.

Start an OnlyFans.

Send nudes.

Microdose ketamine in the desert.

I can't bear a prescription for Coachella. 

I struggle to complete my to-do list as it is.

But whatever. Whatever.

There’s a box coming to my house, and the reviews for both items were extremely high.

Who knows what the future holds beyond my next Amazon delivery?

The modern girl's self-care package.

More Obscene Than Anything

Sometimes life looks like porn on your phone
interrupted by a text message from Food City—

FOODCITY: Build your own Hot Dog Meal
for less than $10. May 13–19 only.

I’m trying.
I’m trying my best, Food City. Believe me.

Back to sweaty bodies moving like rent’s due—
mouths saying what loneliness pays to hear.
Fuck it. What the fuck, Food City?

$10 for hot dogs? Jesus Christ.
That’s more obscene than anything
else that’s come through my phone this week. 

Get a grip
and don’t text me back.

Good Morning, Girlhood.

Nose bled in the morning—
blood from both ends, human cannoli,
cherry-slick filling.
A girl through and through,
a red dessert,
saved for last.

Incorpoweighted

There is no greater feeling
than starting to doze off in a chair
to the tune of weekend afternoon basketball—
the dribbling, bouncing lullaby,
rhythmic back and forth from one court end
to the other. Halftime.

How we must all be horse girls™—
ponytails mid-gallop,
fully ingrained, wanting a mane n’ tail,
so we buy the same shampoo
and conditioner, hoping to wash
the human off us,
equine muscles ready
to flex beneath the skin. 

We are all dopamine sluts,
grasping at the next thing
to feel good and free.

Wake up in the middle of a commercial,
that exact snack already waiting
on the table beside you.

Be Sexy Like That

Pet a feral cat today,

slick as a black satin jacket

someone’s uncle wears

to drink beers through

Andy Griffith reruns,

a massive plastic jar

of cheese puffs

never far from reach—

his right-hand man.

Let the cat purr into your hand,

nuzzling against your palm,

your hand pressed firm

as one presses into a chair

when getting up—

steady, careful, holding.

Take that risk today.

Reach out a finger,

stroke a stranger,

see if it stays.

Technicolor Pinescape.

Want to pass out

in that way

that only comes artificially,

chemical sweet,

like a crow beakful of

Jolly Ranchers—

cherry, not watermelon,

the second-best flavor.

After my head hits

a pillow soft as the cotton

under the pill cap,

twisted open

before we’ve

even left the store.

Then I’ll consolidate my love

into one true way—the way

Dorothy took

the yellow brick road

as if the whole land of Oz

had no back roads,

no cut-throughs—

all them people,

Munchkins and witches,

Tin Men and Scarecrows,

a fucking lion,

a whole kingdom,

only paid for the one road,

bright as hard candy.

BBB: Botticelli Belly Bitch

Three vultures on the road

to Taco Bell while high,

car windows all the way down

to let the outside in and ponder

the natural order of things—

like how I should probably

do Invisalign before I get

a custom gold grill,

but before I do all that,

what do you think

of metallic teeth

on me—

if I got really jacked,

biceps-on-biceps jacked,

rolled T-shirt sleeves,

crop top, my Botticelli

belly on full display,

soft as roadkill

in the sun?

What do you think,

I ask the three vultures,

but they stay busy

with whatever the road

already gave them.

Memorial Day 2026

May 26th will be 15 years since you died.

But who’s counting?

I am.

You’ve been dead as long as I was alive when I met you.

When you said I was your best friend, I went home on a cloud and wrote it in my LiveJournal.

Today, because I’m an emotional masochist, I googled your name.

I like window-shopping pain.

There was an article describing you: “If Ashton L.M. Goodman had a choice of driving a sedan or a 40-foot tractor-trailer, she’d pick the tractor-trailer.

'She was a work-hard, play-hard girl,’ said a friend, Airman 1st Class Vrajhi Brisby. ‘She didn’t care if she broke a nail, got greasy, got sweaty. If she messed up her hair, she didn’t care. Even if you were sitting in the truck, she got dirty.’”

And I know that was true. But other things were true too. How hard you worked to be one of the boys. How quickly you outwardly mocked softness in yourself. How furious you still were at your father for leaving your mom for another woman. As if being harder than everyone else could spare you from becoming like her.

The article continued:

“Her vivacious spirit, zest for life, and eagerness to experience it all will forever be remembered by our team,” said Capt. Stacie N. Shafran.

It’s a bitter pill to know that all they can do is remember your spirit and life, and they did so little to preserve it.

The article was in The Military Times in their “Honor the Fallen” section, which seems like an exceptionally bleak feature. I clicked on “Home,” and it took me to a 9x7 grid of young faces framed by uniforms. Below the grid, arrows to more pages of the grid. It wasn’t until the 30th page that I saw your face, smack dab in the center, a photo from your Facebook, in your uniform.

I didn’t keep going through the pages. At that point, knowing there were at least 1,890 of these faces with articles attached was enough. How many more pages of 9x7 grids are there? I don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

I’m not alone in my pain, yet I am alone. Behind each of those thumbnails and stories: “Greatest guy ever” and “Would give you the shirt off his back.” Why are the dead always the greatest fucking people anyone’s ever met?

But believe it or not, it wasn’t the military article that was the sharpest knife to the heart.

It was a fucking Facebook post on our school district’s Facebook page from just three fucking weeks ago.

Three weeks ago.

THREE WEEKS AGO.

Not even a month ago.

This is breaking news.

This isn’t the Military Times archive.
This is in real time.

Two assholes — that’s all I can see when I look at them. Apple Watch, fake nails, giant diamond ring, stupid smiles, holding a stupid check against an ugly American flag backdrop. I don’t know who they are. Never seen them in my life. Their nametags are too small to read.

The caption: “Honoring a hero. Senior Airman Ashton Goodman Scholarship was presented to WCHS. Warren Central alum, who served two tours and traveled 10,000+ miles delivering vital aid. We honor her service & sacrifice in 2009. Her legacy continues to inspire the next generation of Warriors.”

This pisses me off to no end. Fifteen years for them to realize you joined the Air Force to pay for college? Dead before you even finished the freshman courses. Guess someone else can be saved from that fate. I should be happy. Like one kid gets the golden ticket with your name on it. Marked safe, just for today, from being blown into pieces so badly that not all of you can be recovered.

One lucky kid gets the American flag check. I want to know how much it’s for and where the money came from, but there’s no details.

Of course there aren’t.

It’s probably for $500 and won’t do shit.

But it got 62 likes and four comments.

One comment: “I love that she is being honored in this way. Ashton was an incredibly sweet girl with tiny freckles and a mischievous little giggle. She was kind to everyone, and I am not at all surprised that this was the job she chose while in the Army. I’ll always feel thankful and blessed to have been one of her teachers.”

Doesn’t that make you as angry as it makes me? Because you were angry and bitter too. Yes, you had freckles and impossibly straight teeth and a huge smile and mischievous little giggles, but you also were outraged by injustice. You would topple displays of rat poison in Walmart and kick cars double-parked. I loved that side of you. You and I laid on the graves of children, yelling up at God, at the cold black sky, in fury. That was my Ashton too.

And my Ashton was sad too. You laid on the cool tile in the downstairs bathroom of your mom’s house, drunk, and told me how you were driving the first vehicle in a convoy in Afghanistan — the first tour, the one you didn’t die during — and how there was a little kid standing in the middle of the road in front of you. Dirty face. Holey clothes. Couldn’t have been older than seven.

You asked the commander sitting in the passenger seat what to do, even though you already knew the protocol. Then he said it flat and direct: “Speed up, don’t stop.”

And you did. Because insurgents would send kids out to stop convoys, then attack.

You knew: It was this kid or the whole group of you.

I saw how your eyes squeezed shut as you described running over that kid and how it felt like a speed bump. How speed bumps now made you cry. How seconds later, someone on the radio said, “WOO weee we must have hit a helluva goat.”

But that’s okay. Because now you get 62 likes and four comments, and one of them is a teacher SOOOOOO thankful and blessed to have been one of your teachers. Wonder how thankful and blessed she is for the kids she taught who didn’t die. 

Nobody at Warren Township mailed me a check for carrying this around fifteen years.

She didn’t even know you were in the Air Force, not the Army. Or that you were the third generation of women in your family to join the Air Force. Or that you didn’t “choose” that job — you really thought you were going to be an airplane mechanic because that’s what the recruiters told you when you signed.

I know because I was there. I was holding your hand as you told me how excited you were and how safe you would be. You wouldn’t ever see action, just engines and rotors and grease, and your college would be paid for.

But it’s all fucking lies. And there are grids and grids of photos of kids promised engines and rotors and college money.

And behind each of those photos is some stupid, sad bitch like me still crying and hurt by it all.

oilbirds.

🚨Breaking News🚨

So I joined a WhatsApp group chat for women struggling in their marriages—trying to make it work—and discovered, in the process, that my husband and I actually have a great marriage.

Which is apparently how personal growth works now: not through therapy, reflection, or communication, but by comparing your life to absolute chaos in a group chat of strangers.

Here’s how it happened.

A week and a half ago, he and I had a fight. It wasn’t the worst fight of our marriage, or even the worst in the past 365 days, but something about it shook me a little. I don’t know why.

That’s a lie.

I know why.

Because this was a fight I started, and it was 99% fueled by me—by my worst qualities and insecurities—and escalated because I escalated it. I brought the energy, I set the tone, I curated the experience.

Fights where he’s mostly in the wrong, or it’s equal, or just miscommunication don’t hit like that. This was pure Caroline chaos, and I signed it like the artist I am.

So, in desperation, I turned to Reddit, which is absolutely the worst place to go for relationship advice—other than, probably, ChatGPT. I poured the whole fight into a post like a Victorian woman fainting onto a chaise lounge in my distress.

By the time I got my first comment, my husband and I had already made up. Because, inconveniently, we are adults.

The comments weren’t “leave him,” which is deeply suspicious behavior for Reddit. And many were actually thoughtful and decent, which made me question whether I had accidentally logged into the wrong internet.

This is probably because I posted in a subreddit dedicated to a self-help book I read in 2022 (and reread this January, because growth is circular and I am thriving). The book is aimed at wives trying to improve their marriages, so I guess it tracks.

But from that post…

I got a DM. From a woman. Who has a group chat. On WhatsApp. Of women who had all read the book and were trying to practice the skills in real life and support each other in making their marriages work.

Sure. Ruin my life. Send the link.

What did I have to lose? I am lonely, chronically online, and met the criteria for entry. Worst case, I leave and block everyone like a normal, well-adjusted person would have done immediately.

But damn.

The first few days were fun. Share your three gratitudes for the day. Share three self-cares. Share SFPs—“spouse-fulfilling prophecies”—which sounds fake because it's made up by the author Laura Doyle.

Spouse-fulfilling prophecies: If you believe “my husband is irresponsible,” you take over everything, and he never has to be responsible. Flip it, praise it, and—allegedly—it grows.

Whatever. I’m open to this pop-psychology, manifestation-with-a-crockpot energy. And, annoyingly, it kind of works.

It was fun for a few days.

But then—as the women (there are eight of them) started sharing more, drifting out of the daily exercises and into the “general” chat—it stopped being fun and started being…a cautionary tale.

An unemployed husband who lied about applying to jobs (he didn’t).

A husband who had a side chick for two years, and now they’re moving to the same city as the Other Woman—OW, which I initially thought meant something harmless, like “ow,” not a full-blown second committed relationship.

A wife who cooks multiple elaborate main dishes every night because her husband complains that what she makes “isn’t what he was in the mood for.” As if she’s running a short-order kitchen out of her own house.

A woman who has lived separately from her husband for three years but is still trying to make it work (he bought himself a whole separate house, which feels like a clue).

A guy who told his wife he “didn’t know” what he wanted to do for his birthday, then texted her—mid–home-cooked feast on the day—that he’d be out drinking with friends until 4 a.m. Inspirational.

A man who has never, in his life, cared for any of his five children without his mother or wife supervising.

Five children.

No notes. Actually, many notes, but I will keep them to myself.

And somewhere in there, I realized I needed to stop reading this like the tabloids and start asking what, exactly, had shaken me so much a week ago.

Because, comparatively, my big issue was…we had a fight. That I started. And then we talked about it. And resolved it. Like two deeply inconvenient, emotionally functional people.

Basically, I learned that perhaps much of my marital distress comes from the fact that I cannot stand that my husband and I are mere mortals.

How unfortunate that we must discuss things. Disagree. Talk it out. Use words. Clarify our meaning. Follow up. Grow together.

Instead of magically, innately knowing what the other thinks at all times like emotionally intuitive mind-readers sent from God to never miscommunicate.

And sometimes we bump into each other’s most obnoxious habits and defects and…unleash a little. As one does. 

God, how horrible that we annoy each other with repetitive quirks, stupid TV shows the other doesn’t like, and weird gaps in cultural knowledge.

You know—how he doesn’t know “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, and I don’t know 1960s Westerns.

A tragedy. Truly.

But perhaps—I’m thinking—we might be able to make this work.

Breaking news: I think my marriage might actually be great.

Don’t worry—I’m staying in the WhatsApp group for a while. It’s become less of a support group and more of a daily gratitude practice for everything I have… and everything I absolutely, unequivocally do not.

Wrung Out.

Give me one of them there fancy bitch names,

classical yet unique, like my parents

were academics who value the humanities.

Call me by it, day after day, each morning

and evening, like it’s my own—been mine

the whole time. Shit me into a rose garden—

packed between petals in perfect concentric

circles, like French royal landscapes, boxy

shrubs border. Press me in like a weed between

pages of the Bible. Revive me like a dead man—

mouth-to-mouth, and swallow my breath, let it

slide down the throat to your ass, then fart me

into the wind. Scatter me like bird droppings,

Johnny Appleseed, planted from coast to coast,

touching each ocean with both of my pinkies,

just ’cause you once knew me, corroded and

sun-bleached as I was that day.