Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I'm not alone.

DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.

I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.

There is a ghost here. A lonely, heartbroken spirit. The ghost of everything that could've been and never was.

My father had put these things on the table. I looked at him standing by the sink. He was washing his hands, splashing water on his face. My mamma left us. My brother, too. And now my feckless, reckless uncle had as well. My pa stayed, though. My pa always stayed. I looked at him. And saw the sweat stains on his shirt. And his big, scarred hands. And his dirty, weary face. I remembered how, lying in my bed a few nights before, I had looked forward to showing him my uncle's money. To telling him I was leaving. And I was so ashamed.

The guitar's still around me. I slip it off and put it down. I want to feel him. To feel his breath on my neck. The warmth of his skin. To feel something other than sadness. Hold me, I tell him silently. Hold me here. To this place. This life. Make me want you. Want this. Want something. Please

The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can't you see? I do not.