Toxoplasma gondii is one of the most successful parasites in nature. It attacks the brains of many hosts: cats, dogs, bears, sheep, cattle, chickens, goats, pigs, rats, mice, and humans. Its characteristic effect is to promote restless, incautious behaviors. These may play into the hands of predators and prove fatal. If the host animal dies, and another creature eats it, the latter will likely be infected with toxo.

The nurse was being extremely tactful.

“I think,” she offered tentatively, “that the oxygenation in the room would really be improved if you opened the door to the main hall.”

The cup on the counter. Unwashed, days there, your body reflections through the smudge marks.

It was an oddly warm night in November when Ray decided to jump from my third-floor balcony and into the mostly abandoned parking lot below.

When you’re a little kid growing up in urban America, especially a little kid growing up in public housing in urban America, hardly anything gains you more clout on school grounds than the right pair of kicks.

Taxi declares its central tension in the first eight minutes of the pilot episode: making a life for yourself while the life you want is out of reach. It’s big dreams and found family and disappointments that land just shy of melancholy. It’s about finding a way forward despite how stuck you really are.

An application asks, “Have you ever been suicidal?” Offers two options: Yes or No.

On a lazy, last-gasp-of-summer sort of day, I linger on the patio of a south Asheville bakery. Leaning back in my chair, I marvel at the warmth, at the music drifting over from a nearby brewery, at my good fortune for having arrived here on what would have been, COVID notwithstanding, a perfectly normal Friday.