We are required to assume the psychological burdens of our economic benefactors.

Please, Lord, don’t make me have to be interesting today.

If you make the mistake of asking him something, his eyes glaze over and his mouth twitches into the private smile of a predator who’s just found his victim. Well, he says, that’s an interesting question. In the endless pause that follows, you think, oh shit, we’re in for it now.

“a large but uncertain quantity of discrete, mostly undated texts left in no sequential order, such that every published edition is necessarily untrue to the nonexistent ‘original.’”

He was what we called a “heel-stepper.” Every response started with “yes, but no.”

Fragments, the only things that hold together.

A few more moments of oblivion
before facing it all.

This found bit of scrap metal is better than this tossed-off sketch, which is better than this elaborate story.

If anything, you could probably be a little harder on yourself.

Dry leaves clatter across the driveway. School supplies. Football. Death.

Mon
Stepped outside. Seemed gross. Went back inside.
Tue
Same.
Thurs
—
Next week sometime
Birds, wind. Weeping.

He had lately been spending as much time as possible in the company of animals. No animal had ever ridiculed him, nor regarded him with pity, scorn, or disappointment. Well, possibly disappointment. He could live with that.

It took many years to understand how short a year is.

They were pictures of a beautiful, exhausted world. Pictures of a crucifixion.

Yesterday Doeg and I went to our special place—to the little dirt area beside the tree. Because of allergies, Doeg has chewed off most of his hair. On the way home, heard a young mother say to baby: look, honey, look at the pretty—recoiling as Doeg emerged from behind the car. Still thinking about the look on his face: apologetic.

The inbred entitlement of the once-attractive.

How could something so wonderful even come to exist?

Things you thought were important turned out not to be important.
Things you thought were not important turned out to be important.

Would I give up a lifetime for one more day with you? In a second.