“A Guide to Fooling Yourself” won the 2017 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Prize. It was published on Electric Literature and read live on 10 May 2017 at Symphony Space in New York as part of Selected Shorts.

Take one man and one woman. Let them be: not that young anymore, and feeling it lately. Give them good jobs, their own places, a little money in the bank. How about a recent move? How about California? Honey light, a bike commute to work for him, bougainvillea on the fence of her bungalow, gold in them hills. Day after day after day of blue sky, and then what passes for bad weather: taking your sweater off and putting it on again every half hour. Let them both think: Hallelujah.

Keep reading at Electric Literature, or hear actress Kaneza Schaal read the story: