I offer Emily half of my hit of acid- Love Saves the Day. It's my second or third time tripping, Emily's first, and she's understandably trepid. Awake all night, at one point I find her touching her reflection in a cruelly lit dorm bathroom, asking if she'll ever be the same. I kiss her then for the first time and whisper, No.

Water can be a symbol of purification, to stand naked before someone a sign of truth, of nothing to hide. - Nick Flynn

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.

What you fear your whole life comes to pass. You end up living toward it, you spend your life running from it but your foot is nailed to the sidewalk. You circle around it until you wear yourself own.

inside us, a flower taken whole, a field built inside.

If you're going to write about someone's life, you don't just use them for wallpaper. You have to honor and respect that life.

Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.