Growing Up Dead in Texas

by Stephen Graham Jones

On his dashboard are the rags and wrenches and pamphlets and papers you have to leave on your dash if you want to keep it from cracking open in the sun.

You always look for the moment you grew up, I think. Like it’s a thing that happens all at once. But sometimes it is.

I’d been in elementary-school love with her for a while, ever since she let us listen to her Prince record but lifted the needle at certain times, so as not to corrupt us.

It’s what we all want, to exist like that, so deep in the moment that that moment never stops dilating out and out.