Life's full of opportunities to make crappy decisions that feel good. And after the first one, the rest get a whole lot easier.

Carney is like a graveyard where everyone already owns their plots and has built houses on top of them.

Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today's tasks.

Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die.

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.

Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does.

I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don't think I'm so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without ever really being aware of it--a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking. I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure when it will come.