Willful Creatures

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope - make yourself a structure you can live inside.

I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.

No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness.

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.

Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.

It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened.

He said, I always thought the woman I’d marry would hit me easy, in a bolt of lightning, and there is not lightning there is not even thunder there is not even rain.

This woman he met was the woman he met and however you try, you cannot unmeet.

[...]when he closed his eyes, the torrent of longing waiting inside was so thick he thought he might drown in it.

Her blush was the color of a coral reef, but smooth.

Ponytail girl leaned over and she and the tall boy kissed and it was carcinogen gums and magical.

I wanted to bathe in plum juice, rediscover my body and adorn it in kiwi circles.

She could feel it brimming on her lips, that superstar smile, the bow shape, the teeth long and solid tombstones.

I am going to host Thanksgiving myself and instead of a turkey I’m serving a big human butt.

I exit the bathroom after I’ve used it and the lady who interrupted is standing there and she is embarrassed and I am not and I step on her foot as I walk out and she says, “Oops, sorry,” like all women do and I am mad at that because it was my fault so why is she apologizing? and I hate that she said “Oops” in that little meek voice and now I’m in a bad mood.

We end up kissing her for an hour, and her lips are so soft they are almost like a joke.

She is walking around the living room naked and

It's an hour later now and the guacamole is gone and the brie is all shell and these stupid people don't know that the white part of brie is important to the taste, that it doesn't count if you only eat the mushy inside, that the French would leave en masse if they came to this party and saw the Americans carving out their cheese like cave dwellers, but the party people only like easy cheese, and easy jeans, and they are all sipping from their fluted glasses and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.

We went outside and she held it up and then just let it drop. I kind of wanted her to throw it but she had her own style and that’s okay. It still broke off into little plate pieces that I offered to clean up and while she went back to the turkey I swept up the pieces and thought about my mother who was not afraid. But my girlfriend is. Afraid. Of. Name it. I am going to refuse to go to the emergency room after a while but I know I’m lying when I say that. Some things you know you will never stop, your whole life. Some things just stay and stay.

They laughed endlessly. Too much tonsil, said one, and she grunted in such a way that made them laugh for another ten minutes. It was that fifteen-year-old laugh that is like a stream of bubbles but makes everyone else feel stupid and left out. Which is part of its point.