I could step out of this sad life like it's an old sorry dress.

Our tongues have fallen madly in love and gotten married and moved to Paris.

I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?

In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I'm not.

I could step out of this sad life like it's an old sorry dress.

Years ago, I was crashed in gram’s garden and Big asked me what I was doing. I told him I was looking up at the sky. He said, “That’s a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.

This is the secret I kept from you, Bails, from myself too: I think I liked that Mom was gone, that she could be anybody, anywhere, doing anything. I liked that she was our invention, a woman living on the last page of the story with only what we imagined spread out before her. I liked that she was ours, alone.