“Is that too much to expect? That I would name the starsfor you? That I would take you there? The splashof my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?”

“I had a dream about you. We were in the gold roomwhere everyone finally gets what they want.You said Tell me about your books, your visions madeof flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This isthe Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take youthere. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugarcube…We were in the gold room where everyonefinally gets what they want, so I said What do youwant, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I amleaving you clues. I am singing now while Romeburns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,my silent night, just mash your lips against me.We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”

“I wanted to hurt youbut the victory is that I could not stomach it. We haveswallowed him up, they said. It’s beautiful. It really is.I had a dream about you. We were in the gold roomwhere everyone finally gets what they want.You said Tell me about your books, your visions madeof flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This isthe Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take youthere. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugarcube… We were in the gold room where everyonefinally gets what they want, so I said What do youwant, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I amleaving you clues. I am singing now while Romeburns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,my silent night, just mash your lips against me.We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”

“Knot the tie and go to work, unknot the tie and go to sleep. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I sing. I get out the hammer and start knocking in the wooden pegs that affix the meaning to the landscape, the inner life to the body, the names to the things. I float too much to wander, like you, in the real world. I envy it but that’s the dealio—you’re a train and I’m a trainstation and when I try to guess your trajectory I end up telling my own story.”

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”

“A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. So you do. You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her and she leaves you and you’re desolate.You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. And you can hear the man in the apartment above you taking off his shoes.You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up, you’re waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we arein the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense. And then the second boot falls. And then a third, a fourth, a fifth. A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. But you take him instead.You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich, and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you and he keeps kicking you. You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work. Boots continue to fall to the floor in the apartment above you.You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything’s okay and you tell them you’re just tired. And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says: Make it a double. A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says: Walk a mile in my shoes.A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying: I only wanted something simple, something generic… But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still leftwith the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”