Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it

A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin.

I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.

In spite of everything, I still have my good old sense of humor.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream