she peels an orange and gives one half to me. if i could wear it like a friendship bracelet, i would. instead i swallow it section by section and tell myself it means even more this way. to chew and to swallow in silence here with her. to taste the same thing in the same moment.

...and that orange, it made me so happy, as ordinary things often do. just lately. the shopping, a walk in the park. this is peace and contentment. it's new. the rest of the day was quite easy. i did all the jobs on my list and enjoyed them. i love you. i'm glad i exist.

why do memories glow the way real moments don't? my altar is full of all love's delusions.

when i was a child, it was clear to me that life was not worth living if we did not know love. i wish i could testify that i came to this awareness because of the love i felt in my life. but it was the love's absense that let me know how much love mattered.

i feel lonely. i feel worse— strange. and when i leave i cry in the car. and i say to myself that the trouble with life is that people are strangers. anne... people are strangers. i don't know if i can go on spilling myself out to people— those strange strangers.

i am lonely when i love because i feel the immensity of the task— the stoking and the tending of love. i feel i can only fail. so i hide and cling all at once. i need you near me, in my house, but i don't want you to find my hiding place. hold me. don't come too close.

the worst part of love is that i remember it. i walk around all day thinking: i'm going to die in the universe you loved me in.

when i try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn't changed very much since i was a child— a house with flowers and tress around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that's all.

i wanted to forget him, and yet it seemed i thought of him always. it was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. and sometimes i found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice was still there.

there is a period when it is clear that you have gone wrong, but you continue. sometimes there is a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens.

...just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth. what else is life for? but even that seems so beyond me that it's like a dream, completely unrelated to anything in reality.

i lost myself so many years ago that i hesitate to try to find myself again. i am afraid to begin. existing so often gives me palpitations. i am so afraid to be myself. i am so dangerous.

if all else perished, and he remained, i should still continue to be;

“let it go, then,” stebbins said, and smiled winningly. “if there are such things as souls, his is still close. you could catch up.”

i've gotten so good about not flinching at the sound of your name that people don't know i'd still throw myself mouth-open into the ocean for the chance to drown somewhere you might see it.

i'm sorry. it excited me when you took my hands into yours & turned them over, looking for the burn mark even after i had said i was fine. i'd like for you to hurt me again like that. if only for you to covet me once more.

when i try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn't changed very much since i was a child— a house with flowers and tress around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that's all.

in fact, after reading his account of things, i ached for him, ached for his romantic illusions, and even his dishonesty. i ached even for his gentlemanly malice and his physical presence, the deceptively soft sound of his voice.

we have so much love that it burns like a fire, in which we bake clay figures of you and me. then we take them and break them into pieces and mix them and mold again figures of you and me. i am in your clay. in life we share a single quilt. in death we will share a single coffin.

did i request thee, maker, from my clay to mould me man? did i solicit thee from darkness to promote me?

i know how to fall in love, i do it constantly. i fall in love with everyone i meet for ten minutes at least.