“I KNEW IT WAS OVERwhen tonight you couldn't make the phone ringwhen you used to make the sun risewhen trees used to throw themselvesin front of youto be paper for love lettersthat was how i knew i had to do itswaddle the kids we never hadagainst january's cold slicebundle them in winterclothes they never neededso i could drop them off at my mom'seven though she lives on the other side of the countryand at this late west coast hour isassuredly east coast sleepingpeacefullyher house was lit like a candlethe way homes should bewarm and goldenand homeand the kids ran inand jumped at the bichon frisenamed luckythat she never hadthey hugged the dogit wriggledand the kids were happyyours and minethe ones we never hadand my mom wasgrand maternal, which is to say, with stylethat only comes when you've seenenough to know gracelike when to pretend it's christmas ora birthday soshe lit her voice with tinylights and pretendedshe didn't see me cryingas i drove awayto the hotel connected to the barwhere i ordered the cheapest whisky they hadjust because it shares your first namebecause they don't make a whiskycalled babyand i only thought what i gotwas whati orderedi toasted the hangoverinevitable as sunthat used to risein your namei toasted the carnivalswe never went toand the things you never wonfor methe ferris wheels we neverkissed on and all the dreamsbetween usthat sat therelike balloons on a carney's boardwaiting to explode with passionbut slowly deflatedhung slaveunder the pin-prick of a tackhungheads downlike loverswhen it doesn'twork, like meat last callafter too many cheaptoo many sweettoo muchwhisky makes mesick, like the smell of cheap,like the smell ofthe deadlike the cheap, dead flowersyou never sentthat i never threwout of the windowof a cari neverreallyowned”

“come back so i can say yes this time do it again now that i know what to call what you didthis time i'll be ready i like it rough now and i'm done with romance i never met another man who loved me so much at first sight he had to hurt me to do it”

“Here's to the kids. This one's not for the kids, who always get what they want, But for the ones who never had it at all. It's not for the ones who never got caught, But for the ones who always try and fall. This one's for the kids who didnt make it, We were the kids who never made it. The Overcast girls and the Underdog Boys. Not for the kids who had all their joys. This one's for the kids who never faked it. We're the kids who didn't make it. They say "Breaking hearts is what we do best," And, "We'll make your heart be ripped of your chest" The only heart that I broke was mine, When I got My Hopes up too too high. We were the kids who didnt make it. We are the kids who never made it.”

“Bye-bye, I thought, almost sure that I'd never see her again. But if I did - if we ran into each other someday - I knew we would smile and say polite things like How are you? and Give my regards to your parents, and we would secretly remember that we used to mean something to each other. And even if that never happened, if we never spoke again, I was grateful we'd have tonight.”

“You see, Dash -- I was never the girl in your head. And you were never the boy in my head. I think we both knew that. It's only when we try to make the girl or boy in our head real that the true trouble comes. I did that with Carlos, and it was a bad failure. Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.”

“Fifteen Ways to Stay Alive1. Offer the wolves your arm only from the elbow down. Leave tourniquet space. Do not offer them your calves. Do not offer them your side. Do not let them near your femoral artery, your jugular. Give them only your arm.2. Wear chapstick when kissing the bomb.3. Pretend you don’t know English.4. Pretend you never met her.5. Offer the bomb to the wolves. Offer the wolves to the zombies.6. Only insert a clean knife into your chest. Rusty ones will cause tetanus. Or infection.7. Don’t inhale.8. Realize that this love was not your trainwreck, was not the truck that flattened you, was not your Waterloo, did not cause massive haemorrhaging from a rusty knife. That love is still to come.9. Use a rusty knife to cut through most of the noose in a strategic place so that it breaks when your weight is on it.10. Practice desperate pleas for attention, louder calls for help. Learn them in English, French, Spanish: May Day, Aidez-Moi, Ayúdame.11. Don’t kiss trainwrecks. Don’t kiss knives. Don’t kiss.12. Pretend you made up the zombies, and only superheroes exist.13. Pretend there is no kryptonite.14. Pretend there was no love so sweet that you would have died for it, pretend that it does not belong to someone else now, pretend like your heart depends on it because it does. Pretend there is no wreck — you watched the train go by and felt the air brush your face and that was it. Another train passing. You do not need trains. You can fly. You are a superhero. And there is no kryptonite.15. Forget her name.”

“GONE TO STATICit sounds better than it is,this business of surviving,making it throughthe wrong placeat the wrong timeand livingto tell.when the talk shows and movie creditswear off, it's just me and my dumbluck. this morningI had that dream again:the one where I'm dead.I wake up and nothing'smuch different. everything's gonesepia, a dirty bourbon glassby the bed, you're still dead.I could stumbleto the shower,scrub the luck of breath off my skinbut it's futile.the killer always wins.it's just a matterof time.and I havetime. I have grief and liquor tofill it. tonight, the liquor and I aretalking to you. the liquor says, 'remember'and I fill in the rest, your hands, your smile.all those times. remember.tonight the liquor and Iare telling you about our day.we made it out of bed. we miss you.we were surprised by the blood betweenour legs. we miss you. we made it to the videostore, missing you. we stoppedat the liquor storehoping the bourbon would stopthe missing. there's always morebourbon, more missingtonight, when we got home,there was a stray catat the door.she came in.she screams to be touched.she screamswhen I touch her.she's rightat home.not me.the whisky is openthe vcr is on.I'm runningthe film backwardsand one by oneyou come back to me,all of you.your pulses stutter to a beginyour eyes go from fixed to blinkthe knives come out of your chests, the chainsawsroar outfrom your legsyour wounds seal overyour t-cells multiply, your tumors shrinkthe maniac killerdisappearsit's just you and meand the bourbon and the movieflickering togetherand the air breathes us and I am home, I amluckyI am rightbefore everythinggoes black”