How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?

Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.

For those who need a name, there's a gift basket of medical terms. All I know is cutting made me feel safe. It was proof. Thoughts and words, captured where I could see them and track them. The truth, stinging, on my skin, in a freakish shorthand. Tell me you're going to the doctor, and I'll want to cut worrisome on my arm. Say you've fallen in love and I buzz the outlines of tragic over my breast. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be cured.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

I'd come to believe there was no food more depressing than Danish, a pastry that seemed stale upon arrival

Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror movies use that device-the mysterious knock on the door-because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don't know what's out there, yet you know you'll open it. You'll think what I think: No one bad ever knocks.