- “There are so many things I'm not allowed to tell you. I touch myself, 1 dream. Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks.”
- “I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything, without having to say that I ran out into the street to prove something, that he didn't love me, that I wanted to be possessed, thrown over, that I wanted to have the wounds nailed shut. I want to tell you this story without having to be in it:”
- “ You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you didn't even have a name for.”
- “ The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night is thinking. It’s thinking of love. It’s thinking of stabbing us to death and leaving our bodies in a dumpster. That’s a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.”
- “He had green eyes, so I wanted to sleep with him green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool– You could drown in those eyes, I said.”
- “I wanted to be wanted and he was very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.”
- “ His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker than before, scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.”
- “We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars as the roads around us grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through a glass already laced with frost, but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of lullabies. But damn if there isn’t anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills.”
- “I stare at you like I’m looking through a window, counting birds. You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable. You do the math, you expect the trouble.”
- “Hello darling, sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”
- You said I could have anything wanted, but I just couldn’t say it out loud. Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.
- “Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—here’s the pencil, make it work . . .If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing river water. Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it Jerusalem. We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought, so do it over, give me another version, a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over and over, another bowl of soup. The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”
feb 22 2025 ∞
jul 1 2026 +