Battleborn

A promise unkept will take a man's mind.

Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our lives against that which we thought it would be by now.

His cigarettes helped mark the passage of time, especially on days that seemed all sun and sky...The dependable dwindling of his cigarette supply reassured him that he hadn't been left out here, that eventually he would have to ride into town and things would still be there, that the world hadn't stopped whirling.

You don't love people," he said. "You love what they do to you.

Sometimes love is a wound that opens and closes, opens and closes, all our lives.

The sooner that Layla understands that we are nothing but the sum of that which we endure, the better.

He loved her as though it had never occurred to him that he could feel otherwise. She wanted to be someone who deserved a love like that.

I love you," he said, and though she knew it was true she kept her eyes closed and said, "Don't say that." She did not want to allow that love could be so fearful and meager and misshapen. He left, and she did not try to stop him. She was through trying to stop him. She had been trying to stop him since the day they met.

Everything I can say about what it means to lose, what it means to do without, the inadequate weight of the past, you already know.

P.S. On second thought, perhaps sometimes these things are best left by the side of the road, as it were. Sometimes a person wants a part of you that's no good. Sometimes love is a wound that opens and closes, opens and closes, all our lives.

Jules liked that I was a local. I made her feel authentic, which is especially important to Californians.

She was brave from wine and unseasonable sunshine and the newfound closeness of home.

The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out.

They'd drink like men, like their fathers and uncles, like George fucking Washington...

The dog wants so bad it doesn’t know what it wants,

The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding

My God, he says, kindly. What a nightmare you must be.

Who can say why we offer the parts of ourselves we do, and when. (“Rondine al Nido”)

In California gold was what God was in the rest of the country: everything, everywhere.

A promise unkept will take a man’s mind. It does not matter whether the promise is made by a woman or a territory or a future foretold.