My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead.

The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out.

A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.

For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.

When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.

These bits of poetry that stick to her like burrs.