“O love, how did you get here?
--Nick and the Candlestick”
“There is more than one good way to drown.”
“I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up
and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)”
“The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.”
“Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.”
“Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.”
“Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.”
“I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.”
“the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns”
“The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.”
“You inherit white heather, a bee's wing,
Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness.”
“Through the mind like an oyster labors on and on, / A grain of sand is all we have”
“When I’m curled up in his arms like this, I can never tell how my body looks to him. I worry that I seem completely ridiculous, but I have the ability to squeeze into any little space he leaves for me. I fold my legs until they take up almost no room at all, and curl in my shoulders until they’re practically dislocated. Like a mummy in a tomb. And when I get like this, I don’t care if I never get out; or maybe that’s exactly what I hope will happen.”
“Sometimes people close a door because they’re trying to figure out a way to get you to knock.”
“She could hear her brothers goofing off on the other side of the large, circular lookout. Maybe they’d take their games too far and fall off the side of the mountain and she’d at least have the backseat to herself for the interminable ride home.”
“Jim eyed me for a couple of seconds, then got off the bed and went to curl up on the pile of blankets I'd
arranged as its bed. "I don't suppose you'd care to lend me a couple hundred euros?"
I pointed at the wall. It turned its back to me so I could get into the nightgown Perdita had lent me. "You
are not going to bet on me. Or against me. No betting whatsoever.
Got that?"
Jim huffed and settled down for the night. "You sure do know how to take all the fun out of life. Bet you
even made Drake use a condom.”
“I really think you should go out, Walter.” “No, thank you. I don’t like it there.”
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