“And life definitely doesn't want me To just let it tell me that the girl I met,The beautiful, amazing, strong, resilient girl That I fell so hard forShould only come in third Life knows. Life is trying to tell neThat the girl I love The girl I fellSo hard for?There's room for her in first. I'm putting her first.”

“I met a girl in a U-Haul.A beautiful girlAnd I fell for her.I fell hard.Unfortunately, sometimes life gets in the way.Life definitely got in my way.It got all up in my damn way,Life blocked the door with a stack of wooden 2x4'snailed together and attached to a fifteen inch concrete wallbehind a row of solid steel bars, bolted to a titanium frame thatno matter how hard I shoved against it-Itwouldn'tbudge.Sometimes life doesn't budge.It just gets all up in your damn way.It blocked my plans, my dreams, my desires, my wishes,my wants, my needs.It blocked out that beautiful girlThat I fell so hard for.Life tries to tell you what's best for youWhat should be most important to youWhat should come in firstOr secondOr third.I tried so hard to keep it all organized, alphabetized,stacked in chronological order, everything in its perfect space,its perfect place.I thought that's what life wanted me to do.This is what life needed for me to do.Right?Keep it all in sequence?Sometimes, life gets in your way.It gets all up in your damn way.But it doesn't get all up in your damn way because itwants you to just give up and let it take control. Life doesn't getall up in your damn way because it just wants you to hand it allover and be carried along.Life wants you to fight it.It wants you to grab an axe and hack through the wood.It wants you to get a sledgehammer and break throughthe concrete.It wants you to grab a torch and burn through the metaland steel until you can reach through and grab it.Life wants you to grab all the organized, thealphabetized, the chronological, the sequenced. It wants you tomix it all together,stir it up,blend it.Life doesn't want you to let it tell you that your littlebrother should be the only thing that comes first.Life doesn't want you to let it tell you that your careerand your education should be the only thing that comes insecond.And life definitely doesn't want meTo just let it tell methat the girl I met,The beautiful, strong, amazing, resilient girlThat I fell so hard forShould only come in third.Life knows.Life is trying to tell meThat the girl I love,The girl I fellSo hard for?There's room for her in first.I'm putting her first.”

“I'm crying for the little girl whose mother divorced her father, the girl who wanted to fall in love for the first time but wasn't ready for sex, the girl who dated a boy just because he wasn't the first one, the girl who fell hard for the guy with the easy smile and the green eyes, the girl who needed to prove she could hook up on a class trip, the girl who rand for student council just to impress a guy, the girl who lost her best friend, the girl whose father doesn't care anymore, the girl who doesn't have the money for college, the girl who just wants her grandma to fix everything, the girl who doesn't talk to anyone about anything, the girl who just can't fall in love again - even if a sweet guy folds a thousand paper cranes. Just for her.”

“cause it's a hard life, with love in the world. and i'm a hard girl, loving me is like chewing on pearls.”

“As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion--she lost her head over it--we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope.”

“I fell in love with a beautiful girl, got her pregnant, and then I got married. I wonder whatever happened to that beautiful girl I got pregnant.”