Moonrise

What can we forgive? Anything. If that's what we choose.

Time travel me back. Let me say good-bye again. A minute more, a moment, a chance to see. . .

I don't believe in God today. I don't even believe in people.

You stay in today, Joe, 'cause tomorrow's a story that ain't been written yet. No use in rehearsing it. No use at all.

I don't know why I didn't put my arms around her, tell her it's OK, that I know she never meant to hurt me, that sometimes we like people we shouldn't and by the time we feel what we feel it's already too late.

Will you be ok if I'm not around? he asked. Sure, I said, but I didn't mean it. Ed was my brother but also sort of like my dad and my best friend too.

Some guys get fifteen years, others get life. So death for Ed but not for everyone. Cos it all depends on who you kill and where you kill them too. Like, don't shoot a white cop in Walker Country, Texas. If that's your plan, do it in Arlington, New York- no needles of electric chairs there. Just doesn't seen fair to me.

Death row is a place for broken people just like Tom Hanks. They can't be fixed, warped all out of shape by the cracks and splinters inside them. And what else can you do with stuff that's broken except throw it in the trash? Right?

But it happens, doesn't it? Death. Either suddenly or steadily. But you never put it in your calendar, X marks the spot – let's get the headstone in a Black Friday sale and have the name chiselled into it. You can never usually plan on death like that.

So, do all the stuff you want even if someone tries to deadlock your front door. Be brave about it. Open the back door at night and let in the noises, or hell, I don’t know, run, escape if you have to. If that’s the only way to live. And if someone tries to stop you, you tell them you can’t save anyone’s life but your own.

Being with Nell knocks my head back, makes my bones thrum, my blood ring and boil up until we are reaching, grabbing, smothering each other. And skin to skin our aching bodies press to find a way in - and I mean pressing, pressing, pressing. And there's teeth brawling, hands clutching, as we pour our way into each other until everything stops, gives way to soft kisses. quiet breaths of friendship, and I say, 'Are you OK?' and actually fucking mean it.

I lit a candle for Ed, thought about him alonde during the holidays in a cell with no tinsel or twinkling lights, no chance of seeing a full moon or any moon for that matter.

I'd wake up screaming or in a wet bed, and Ed never said, 'Grow up, Joe, or got cross about being woken. He'd pull back his blanket and let me sleep next to him. And when I did, the nightmares and bedwetting went away.

Je ne suis même pas d'humeur à prier. Je ne crois pas en Dieu aujourd'hui. Je ne crois même pas en l'humanité.

I slide out of the booth, the diner, into the heat of the afternoon hating with every inch of my bones the so-called free country I live in, the home of the brave.