It embarrassed me. Marrow-deep embarrassment, the kind that becomes part of your DNA, that changes you.
He’s as smooth and shallow as glass.
Shotgun blasts in a small hallway. The panicked, jaybird cries of my mother, still trying to save her kids with half her head gone.
I simply assumed I would bundle up my New York wife with her New York interests, her New York pride, and remove her from her New York parents – leave the frantic, thrilling futureland of Manhattan behind – and transplant her to a little town on the river in Missouri, and all would be fine.
What are you doing here?” asked the prettiest. Her flushed face had the roundness of a girl barely in her teens and her hair was parted in ribbons, but her breasts, which she aimed proudly outward, were those of a grown woman. A lucky grown woman.
My demons aren’t remotely tackled, they’re just mildly concussed.
I jammed a floppy blue teddy bear under my head, then felt guilty and returned him to the foot of the bed. One should have allegiance to one’s childhood things.
People who get caught get caught because they don’t have patience; they refuse to plan.
We are all working from the same dog-eared script.
She simply makes things a reality by assuming they are such.
Looking at my smarmy grin, my hooded eyes, I thought, I would hate this guy.
My mother breezed in, smelling like bright blue water. She looked more comfortable in the Nash house than Mrs. Nash did. It was a natural gift for Adora, making other women feel incidental.
If things had gone according to my wife’s vision, yesterday she would have hovered near me as I read this poem, watching me expectantly, the hope emanating from her like a fever: Please get this. Please get me.
I am a liar and a thief. Don’t let me into your house, and if you do, don’t leave me alone. I take things. You can catch me with your string of fine pearls clickering in my greedy little paws, and I’ll tell you they reminded me of my mother’s and I just had to touch them, just for a second, and I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me. My mom never owned any jewelry that didn’t turn her skin green, but you won’t know that. And I’ll still swipe the pearls when you’re not looking.
I wish I’d be murdered... Then I’d never have to worry again. When you die, you become perfect. I’d be like Princess Diana. Everyone loves her now.
I drank the rest of the sours and had dark sticky dreams. My mother had cut me open and was unpacking my organs, stacking them in a row on my bed as my flesh flapped to either side.
A veces mis cicatrices tienen vida propia.
Sometimes guys, they make things hard for us just because they can.
What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn the switch off except hurting? What does that mean?
It is a line that is only a little funny, but it already has the feel of an inside joke, one that will get funnier with nostalgic repetition.
Just one olive, though.