“TuesdayI have invented a lie.There is no other day but Monday.It seemed reasonable to pretendthat I could change the daylike a pair of socks.To tell the truthdays are all the same sizeand words aren't much company.If I were sick, I'd be a child,tucked in under the woolens, sipping my broth.As it is,the days are not worth grabbing or lying about.Nevertheless, you are the only onethat I can bother with this matter. MondayIt would be pleasant to be drunk:faithless to my tongue and hands,giving up the boundariesfor the heroic gin.Dead drunkis the term I think of,insensible,neither cool nor warm,without a head or foot.To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.I will try it shortly.”

“Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far ...”

“Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.Then the almost unnameable lust returns.Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention,the furniture you have placed under the sun.But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic.In this way, heavy and thoughtful,warmer than oil or water,I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.I did not think of my body at needle point.Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.Suicides have already betrayed the body.Still-born, they don't always die,but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweetthat even children would look on and smile.To thrust all that life under your tongue!—that, all by itself, becomes a passion.Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,and yet she waits for me, year after year,to so delicately undo an old wound,to empty my breath from its bad prison.Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,leaving the page of the book carelessly open,something unsaid, the phone off the hookand the love, whatever it was, an infection.”

“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.”

“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. [...] I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”

“WordsBe careful of words,even the miraculous ones.For the miraculous we do our best,sometimes they swarm like insectsand leave not a sting but a kiss.They can be as good as fingers.They can be as trusty as the rockyou stick your bottom on.But they can be both daisies and bruises.Yet I am in love with words.They are doves falling out of the ceiling.They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.They are the trees, the legs of summer,and the sun, its passionate face.Yet often they fail me.I have so much I want to say,so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.But the words aren't good enough,the wrong ones kiss me.Sometimes I fly like an eaglebut with the wings of a wren.But I try to take careand be gentle to them.Words and eggs must be handled with care.Once broken they are impossiblethings to repair.”

“She suffers according to the digitsof my hate. I hear the filamentsof alabaster. I would lie downwith them and lift my madnessoff like a wig. I would lieoutside in a room of wooland let the snow cover me.Paris white or flake whiteor argentine, all in the washbasinof my mouth, calling “Oh.”I am empty. I am witless.Death is here. There is noother settlement.”