“I looked good when I sang the end.”

“When I look down, I miss all the good stuffAnd when I look up, I just trip over things...”

“Silver” is what I called girls who were natural beauties but who also smoothed on a layer of pretty from a jar. It wasn’t just how they looked, it was how they were. The name came from a song my mother sang sometimes when she was getting dressed to go out somewhere special. She sang along with Aretha Franklin at the end: “Sail on, silver girl… Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way.”

“These jeans looked so good on me when I looked in the mirror I wanted to fuck myself.”

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

“XII sang his name instead of song;Over and over I sang his name:Backward and forward I sang it along,With my sweetest notes, it was still the same!I sang it low, that the slave-girls nearMight never guess, from what they could hear,That all the song was a name.”