Kate Ryan

I saw my old babysitter at a women’s wrestling cage match.

His mind rode the lines, circling on an endless loop to nowhere as he attempted to go about his activities.

She gropes for attention while he dies in the other room.

The Gap come autumn: where normcore and film noir cleverly collide.

Like booster engines emptied of fuel, my limbs become disposable, useless tanks as the blood rushes from them.

Eva, having stayed up the whole night preoccupied with death and time, planned to call in sick.

As an Uber driver, I have the privilege of talking to and eavesdropping on a sampling of L.A.’s finest, ranging from the clinically insane to the simply self-absorbed. As a writer, there is no end to the amount of inspiration my passengers provide.

She couldn’t imagine the water she sat in, the water that enveloped her body, wanted to be here.

The bread had to be store-bought and white, of course, so as not to raise a red flag among my classmates. I still see rebellion in a ham sandwich.

She knows you’re not supposed to call it an “it,” but she honestly can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl or . . . undecided.