Improper Storytelling

Custody of Rain

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:30:00 -0500

The wedding took eleven minutes to divide.

The rain took three days.

Memory court was not as scary as people said it was. Nobody ever shouted, “You ruined me!” while pointing an accusatory finger at their former spouse. It was a quiet process, largely because the fees attached to emotional escalation were astronomically high.

Contact

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For questions, readings, collaborations, publishing inquiries, or anything that belongs somewhere between those things, you can reach me here.

The Lowest Places First

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Flooding was a word from another time, and nobody used it anymore because it sounded like a bad omen. It evoked images of rushing water and submerged cars, or worse, like people standing on their roofs with their kids and dogs, waiting for help that would never come.

README.md

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

project name

milo-dixon or first_body
or whatever_name_was_available

I have been called other things. My surname was assigned, and my given name was inherited. My middle name is shouted most often, but that has since been reclaimed. I chose a variation of my middle name later to identify, when I shook the hand of someone who didn’t know me at all.

Two Sculptures Meet

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0500

She was carved from thunderstorms.
And he, from wind.
When their hands first touched,
the marble should have cracked.

But her stone warmed beneath his fingertips.
And his surface softened where her palm pressed.

Finger Guns

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Of course I know you love me,
You didn’t have to stay.
But when I was at my worst,
You loved me anyway.

You held your arms out to me,
And said, “do what you will”,
But somewhere in the loving embrace,
You forgot that doctrine, still.

A Reasonable Argument

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0500

I have been so good at full.
The loud, flooding kind of full.
Somebody-want-me full,
spilling over just to prove without a shadow of a doubt,
That there was something in me worth spilling.

Key Lime Pie

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Your hands were the first thing I noticed about you.
They were calloused but still delicate,
with a tan that reminded me of a graham cracker crust.

Strong hands that could fix a fence post,
or make a damn good breakfast,
or break a heart.

Pancake Corpses

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Someone told me
they’d become good at making pancakes
as if mastery had quietly crept in
after years of early-morning battles.

And I could almost see them:
the pancake corpses,
scattered like pale moons across a kitchen floor.
Little doughy casualties of a person learning
how not to burn every beginning.

The Tadpole and the Snake

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

The tadpole was moving again.
It did not decide to move,
nor did it remember why it had started.
It simply felt the pull.
A restless, invisible thread unraveling inside its chest.

An Astonishing Sculpture

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Begin with marble, untouched.
Not white, nor black, nor gray,
but the color of your earliest memory.

Start to chisel, not with a steely heart,
but with the breath of a newborn’s cry.
Soft, but piercing, so that it may shape the stone

redo.py

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 13:00:00 -0500



import time
import datetime
import sys


from memory import suppress, restore, rewrite
from grief import unresolved, pending, buried




TARGET_YEAR = None # to be determined
TARGET_MOMENT = None # working on it
REASON = [] # see below


redo_counter = 0 # how many times I have wished I could go back
# current value: too high to store as integer


REASON.append("the flowers")

You went to see Aunt Maxine that weekend.

Beetle on a Board

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

My love was never a still thing.
It’s not positioned beneath glass,
with flaws frozen in time,
and gestures affixed to the frame.

The wings of my love are spread and speared,
but not for seeing flight,
nor mistaking stillness for closeness.

Far Too Close

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0500

By chance we met, just once that year,
when he walked by me at dawn.
I met his glance, he flashed a smile,
But when I looked up, he was gone

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Milo Dixon, a Chicago-based writer and poet.

Some people become more interesting as you learn more about them. I am not one of those people; I get less interesting, so I go out of my way to keep most people at a distance.

Now

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Right now, Improper Storytelling is being shaped into a small author hub for published work, fiction, poems, projects, and notes.

The current focus is simple: make the work easy to find, make the pages comfortable to read, and give each section enough structure to grow without turning the site into a generic blog.