So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

The zipper opened all the way down our spines.

A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.

It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.

Depending on the year or the therapist he was seeing, he'd learned to ascribe just about every facet of his character as a psychological reaction to his parents' fighting: his laziness, his overachieving, his tendency to isolate, his tendency to seduce, his hypochondria, his sense of invulnerability, his self-loathing, his narcissism.

Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.