Joe Meno (born 1974) is a novelist, writer of short fiction, playwright, and music journalist based in Chicago.
Imagination is a place where all the important answers live.
People are just greedy animals, after all.
Above the dirt of an unmarked grave and beneath the shadow of the abandoned refinery, the children would play their own made up games: Wild West Accountants! in which they would calculate the loss of a shipment of gold stolen from an imaginary stagecoach, or Recently Divorced Scientists! in which they would build a super-collider out of garbage to try and win back their recently lost loves.
What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.
Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this.
The world of evil is only as evil as we allow it to be.
The longer human beings exist, it seems, the less likely we are to choose to be brave.
In our town there is a secret spot where you can still see the stars at night, believe it or not. It is the only spot like that left, unclouded by the dwindling skyscrapers rising nearby. It is a good place to go to walk and talk in whispers. Following the little hill that rises from the park to a small clearing which overlooks the statue of the armless general on his bronze steed, most of us later remember this spot as the first place we knew we might be in love.