“4. Full Circle Today I like the traffic jam. The engine noises heard in detail. My whole life, a river of thresholds, stitches itself together and gazes at me from everywhere.I like these places where time kinks and looks back over its shoulder at itself. It confuses them, who are used to being blurs. But I’m alright here with my terror. I’m in no hurry. I get paid by the hour.I let anybody merge in front of me. I know there’s nowhere to hide.”

“2Here is your inheritance:to be a person and go on blushing, applauding,saying “pardon me” without understandinghow it started, or stopping to ask;believing somebody else knows;not wanting to be alone.Esoteric burlesque blossoming in mirrors, paraphernalia,rainbows, dolorous sombreros, days.The same presence everywhere. Look for it, it eludes you.Not wanting to be the only onewith a small black coffin in your heart,a small black coffin the size of a thumbwith nothing in it but wind.For now, take this black rock and go on polishing it.A golden cricket lives in it, listen;a tiny blue loom.”

“There are moments in my life when I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. I pay attention to them. They’re my cosmic landmarks, letting me know I’m on the right path. Now that I’m older and can look back and see where I missed a turn here and there, and know the price I paid for those oversights, I try to look sharper at the present.”

“You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”

“It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?”

“I want to apologize to you, Nikki. Not just, ‘hey, sorry,’ but really. Apologize.” He paused, either to let her absorb it or to find his way, then he went on, “This is all still new to both of us. You and I came to each other with full lives, past baggage, careers, the works. Both of us. And this trip of mine, this was the first time since we got together that you’re seeing what my real work is like. I have the advantage of having gone on ride-along, so you—I get your life, inside and out. Me, I’m an investigative journalist. If I’m doing it right, I’m spending big stretches of time in places nobody else has the balls to go and under conditions most reporters wouldn’t put up with. That explains why I fell off the radar on my story. I told you I might before I left. But it’s no excuse for not calling you when I got in the clear. The only explanation I can give may sound flimsy, but it’s the truth. When I come off assignment, I have a routine. I sleep like the dead and write like the devil, in seclusion. It’s the way I’ve always done it. For years. But now—I realize something’s different now. I’m not the only one involved.“Now, if I could take back the past twenty-four hours, I would, but I can’t. What I can do, though, is say when I look at you now and see the hurt in you—the hurt I caused by being insensitive—I see pain I never want to bring to you again.” He let that sit there, then said, “Nikki, I apologize. I was wrong. And I am sorry.”

“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right into through if the skin wasn’t trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.”