Nick Burd

“The world is vast and meant for wandering. There is always somewhere else to go.”

“Sprawled out on the front lawn Looking up at an ordinary sky It could fall on me and somehow be The day I didn't die”

“The truckers are staring," I said after a few seconds.It was true. They were. The whole row of them was doing a bad job of pretending not to look at us. "We just got engaged," Lucy shouted over to them. "I just asked this man to be my wife."The men at the counter traded confused looks. I burst out laughing. "We're glad you and your ass cracks could share this moment with us," she went on. "Seriously. We really are. Those are serious cracks and this is a serious moment.”

“I stopped wanting to float away from my life, because in the end my life was all I had. I'd walk the Fairmont campus and look up to the sky and I wouldn't see myself drifting off like some lost balloon. Instead I saw the size of the world and found comfort in its hugeness. I'd think back to those times when I felt like everything was closing in on me, those times when I thought I was stuck, and I realized that I was wrong. There is always hope. The world is vast and meant for wandering. There is always somewhere else to go.”

“I was vaguely worried about how they would cope with wandering the desert of adulthood without the other's hand to hold, but then I remembered that they never appeared to give each other that much comfort in the first place, or at least if they had, those days were buried so far in the past that it was hard to consider them a meaningful part of their life.”

“I think some love you can stand to let go of because it's ultimately for the best, but other types you have to stick with until the day you die even when it's hard.You have to think about that before you run away from wherever you are. And then when you know, you either stay or you go and pray thatyou're making the right decision.”

“Was he coming to bury the hatchet? Was there a hatchet to even be buried? For some reason I started thinking of how weird it was that I would always be his son and he would always be my father, that there was nothing that could ever change. I didn't know whether this permanence was comforting or terrifying.”

“Love. People threw that word around like carzy.”

“I looked in the mirror and stared at my reflection, until I was in the head-clearing trance that comes when you stare at something for a long time.”

“Dads are the appendix of humanity. They should just be taken out before they start causing problems.”

“For some reason I didn't believe it. I don't know why. Maybe it was because my father was the kind of person who told himself things over and over until he believed them, who could justify almost anything. What I wanted was for it to really be okay. I wanted him to really not care, to maybe even be happy about it. Instead he was acting like I was making a bad career choice, like I was passing up an English degree at Fairmont in favor of a bartending certificate at the local community college.”

“gettimg attached to things is pointless. Thats how things get screwed up.People care to much about everything. Let it go. You'll be happier.”

“Its hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they'll do with it once they have it.”

“I was touched that he'd brought me here. I didn't know what to say. Up until then there was a part of me that wondered if maybe there was nothing more to him than an aura of danger and a disposable charm that he used to keep himself from getting into too much trouble. I was beginning to realize that like everyone else, he was searching for something, and like everyone else, he had no idea where he could find it.Thanks for bringing me here," I said. " It really means a lot me."Does it?" he asked. He seemed genuinely surprised by this. "I'm glad. I wasn't sure if you'd get it. I thought maybe you'd think it was creepy."No," I said quickly. "Not at all. I like that there's these different parts to you."Good," he said, smiling. "It's hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they'll do with it once they have it.”

“I practiced saying I was gay to inanimate objects around the house. I told the soap dish in the bathroom, the ceiling fan above my bed, the blue drinking glass I favored above all the others simply because over the years its entire family had perished one by one during various interactions with hard surfaces around the kitchen and I'd convinced myself our solitude was linked."I'm gay," I told these things. "I'm a homo."I would wait for the orphaned drinking glass to shatter, the ceiling fan to drop, or for the soap dish to let out a bloodcurdling scream. But nothing ever happened. The world went on as ever.”

“Let it all out. If only I could. Letting it all out would involve me exploding like a firework, a beautiful riot of rainbow sparks bouncing around the car and lighting up the entire lot.”

“Dade Kincaid is not afraid of the things of which the world is made.”

“He'd been looking for me? I forced myself to remain cool about this, to not pump my fist in the air. I wondered where I'd been. Probably swimming in my pool or driving around town or sprawled out on my bed and thinking about him. There was something beautiful about the idea of us reaching invisibly across town for each other.”