"You’ll see, when she smiles, you’ll love her.”

No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention..

“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

“‘I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.’”

“He doesn’t like to cuddle. He likes to grip my hips and pull the fibers of pink tissue in shreds from my lip with his teeth. He throws his hands in the air like a messiah and leans his head out the open window. easy. breathe. codeine. breeze. We laugh loudly and kiss loudly and moan loudly. He mouths vulgar things that make me giggle in front of our friends. I run my hand along the seam off his tight black jeans beneath the table top. He rolls his eyes and smirks at me. We take every opportunity to touch, to feel, so secretly. So public. Exhibitionist pleasure. We play like children, tousling my hair and I climb on his back. We roll spliff after spliff and talk rapidly and vigorously and trip over each others sentences like a sidewalk crack. He says “us” like it means “amen” and his eyes burn wild with a fire of passion. We get drunk. Off of wine and skin and things we love. His smile erupts across his face like it could shatter his cheekbones. His eyes glimmer like a lake catching the glare of the moonlight. A glint of silver is growing up the side of his hairline. He thinks it makes him look distinguished. I laugh and agree. He loves to be so much older than me. He thinks it makes him wise. We spend a lot of time in hotel rooms with the doors shut. (We spend a lot of time outside of hotel rooms with our mouths shut.) He thinks the Xanax makes the sex last longer and I don’t argue. I always wake up first. I sit at the desk and work quietly and glance at him in the sheets. Vulnerable and quiet. Soft face. Soft sounds. A warm cup of coffee and marmalade light through the windows. We bond over love for our brothers. We fight over where the chord change should go. We tease, oh we tease. He likes clean socks and messy hair and he runs his fingers down my overall straps with a tigers grin. He writes his name in the fog on the mirror from where he grabbed a fistful of my hair and pressed my face against the glass. He loves soul music. We sing confidently and triumphantly. I tap my fingers like spiders legs across his bare chest and undo his buttons one by one. I toss my head back and laugh maniacally and pout my lips when he won’t be fair. He speaks like a pastor and trips over his words, his tongue struggles to meet his brain. That’s how a prodigy thinks. (Or it’s the drugs). He knows when my words are about him and he lets it all go to his head and I don’t care because I love to watch him love himself. We laugh and fuck and play and write and plot and say goodbye and never worry. He is my occasional constant. A parody of himself. A paradox of ever present and transparent. I don’t care what he is.”

““One moment longer,” whispered solitude and the summer moon, “stay with us: all is truly quiet now […]”

“Millions of people have decided not to be sensitive. They have grown thick skins around themselves just to avoid being hurt by anybody. But it is at great cost. Nobody can hurt them, but nobody can make them happy either.”

“If you’re tired of kissing me I’d better go.”

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”