“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.”

“There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western,Henry. It’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyardout of the bone white afternoon.It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario, and we keep doing it Henry,keep saying until we get it right … but we always win and we never quit.See, we’ve won again,here we are at the place where I get to beg for it, where I get to say Please,for just one night, will you lie down next to me, we can leave our clothes on,we can stay all buttoned up …But we both know how it goes—I say I want you inside me and you holdmy head underwater. I say I want you inside me and you split me openwith a knife.”

“Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. 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.”

“Every morning the maple leaves.Every morning another chapter where the hero shiftsfrom one foot to the other. Every morning the same bigand little words all spelling out desire, all spelling outYou will be alone always and then you will die.So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalogof non-definitive acts,something other than the desperation.Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your partyand seduced youand left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.Love always wakes the dragon and suddenlyflames everywhere.I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.I’m not the princess either.Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallowglass, but that comes later.Let me do it right for once,for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,you know the story, simply heaven.Inside your head you hear a phone ringingand when you open your eyesonly a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.Inside your head the sound of glass,a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.Hello darling, sorry about that.Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry welived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwelland how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.Especially that, but I should have known.Inside your head you heara phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing upin a stranger’s bathroom,standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes awayfrom the dirtiest thing you know.All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenlydarkness,suddenly only darkness.In the living room, in the broken yard,in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airportbathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy ofunnatural light,my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,smiling in a waythat made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,up the stairs of the buildingto the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,I looked out the window and saidThis doesn’t look that much different from home,because it didn’t,but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,smiling and crying in a way that made meeven more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but Ijust couldn’t say it out loud.Actually, you said Love, for you,is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’sterrifying. No onewill ever want to sleep with you.Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—here’s the pencil, make it work …If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the windowis over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathingriver water.Dear Forgiveness, you know that recentlywe have had our difficulties and there are many thingsI want to ask you.I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,years later, in the chlorinated pool.I am still talking to you about help. I still do not havethese luxuries.I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.Quit milling around the yard and come inside.”

“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.”

“Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.”

“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”