My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.

And then I was asleep. That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep, that sleep that is not particularly restful but difficult to wake up from all the same.

I hope we get pulled over, he says. I'd like to see how the cop responds to a black man wearing a Confederate T-shirt over a black dress.

Every second of your definitionally temporary consciousness, you are choosing how you spend something that will not last forever.