For years I proceeded as if my activity had significance—a toddler solemnly pretend-working with blocks.

He wanted things to add up, but they didn’t.
Some were less, and some were more.

Be the love you never received.

Do NOT react.

Always never not letting go.

Their rigorously maintained veneer of civility lasted 90 seconds into his birthday toast.

On Sunday night he put on his work suit and sat in a chair until dawn.

Painkiller—what a beautiful word.

The inexplicable burst of popularity he had enjoyed in his youth dissipated quickly as his contempt for the audience became all too obvious.

Thirty years of thinking have emptied you out. Finally, you know nothing.

A summer day in the late sixties. The rusted 409 is up on blocks next to the driveway. Dad is out back drinking and rage-mowing under a blackening sky. It feels like something bad is about to happen. Within a few months you’ll be hitching to LA. You think you’ll be able to outrun your sadness, but in this life you can’t outrun anything.

Layers to cover your ruined body, dark glasses for your ruined eyes.

A ghost in a dream in a story by an anonymous author on a deactivated account of a defunct social media platform.

My participation in events to which I’d thought myself central, I came to realize, went mostly unnoticed.

He needed to believe that their shared ordeal had brought them closer, but she wanted as far away as possible.