#lastlines

Porches and Last Lines

I closed my eyes, head drooping, like a person drunk for so long she no longer knows she’s drunk, and then, drunk, awoke to the world which lay before me.’

Kathy Acker, Don Quixote (1986)

Most of my friends know that I have some hermit tendencies. I am socially anxious before I go anywhere. I’m fine once I actually get there, but sweet mother of big foots, you do not want to see me right…

I have fallen in love with his last lines. The way that they break open, pour out onto the bodies of the characters. Sticky and sweet, affixing onto the texture of their skin, freckles. Sliding down the backs of their spines.

Lingering.

Let them press, swell into the pores of your skin. Fold into your sheets at night, fall asleep thinking of them. 

“The mattress and sheets tore, and the bed frame collapsed, but none of it has to do with decay” (51).

“Although Don Victoriano never admitted this to anyone, except once in the confessional, he never boarded the plane because he was afraid of dying away from his book” (116).