Darnell Lamont Walker

“I didn’t mean to snore in your ear, but I wanted to inhale all of what was wrapped up in the comforter with me.”

“And you say Paris is gay, but it has its down times. You say go in the spring and not the summer, because watching the autumn creep through the Rive Gauche preparing for winter is hard.”

“Drugs are the gateway drug”

“I enabled your tendency to be vulnerable and weak, and your habits of crying when 6,000 others were present for the music.”

“I,” I start, and she turns to look at my lips moving, rehearsing for some grand proposal. “I think it’d be good idea if you brought a few books over and left them on my shelf.” I’m a writer, and this is as good as it gets. She didn’t need a ring, just the ability to borrow a bookmark whenever she needed, or unwritten or unspoken permission to take my copy of Cecil Brown’s The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger with the original cover.”

“It’s Friday night and the rain is coming and I’ll find myself at some bar making some woman smile, wondering if you’d hop on the next thing moving in this direction, run in the house, throw on your chucks and play with me in the rain.”

“After every shirt she looks at me and smiles, letting go of air she no longer needs. She laughs after the sweater, knowing I’m gonna tell her it’s too hot for it, knowing she’ll say it’s for the plane and ask “what if the room gets cold?”

“I’m not sure what it was or where she sprayed it, but her scent will be the end of the life I loved. And I will find comfort in the simpleness of sitting with her on a Saturday afternoon with nothing else to do.”

“Once a year I need to hear you tell me how proud you are of me for growing a little more.”

“You have to have a view of something,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll believe yourself to be a god, not knowing there are a million other things out there bigger than you.”

“come. when i finish writing, let's take a drive up the PCH with a bottle of cheap wine and talk about these lives we built”

“i have friends who know everything there is to know about life except how to enjoy it”

“if i'd die for you, i'm certainly living for you as i type this.”

“there is only one real sin: being different. i'll be damned.”

“there are institutions filled with people who talk to god. we've labeled and drugged them.”

“i wasn't born mediocre, i won't achieve mediocrity, and i will not let anyone put it on me. i will kill you.”