I’m sorry your last girlfriend didn’t like it when you spoke to her in metaphors, but she obviously didn’t know what you were worth. Just as a treasure chest is never left in plain sight, one must dig a little deeper to find the treasure within your words.
Intimate Strangers
I was always entranced by your word-ramble poetry, and the beautiful ideas that would fall out of your mouth. But outside of those conversations, we barely spoke to each other at all.
Neurosis
She couldn’t stop going back over certain things she’d done—persecuting herself, and then forgiving herself again by turns. It felt as though she were free-falling through an abyss of self-analysis.
Monsters under the Bed
Night after night they grumbled about being hungry and dared her to step foot on the floor.
Instead, last night she set up a trip-wire and watched them drag her rapist step-father into the shadows, and smiled.
Pop Culture
Of course her best friends were all gay men. They were always saying funny things like: “They should never have hired Sienna Miller to play Edie Sedgewick – Lady Gaga is already playing Edie Sedgewick for free.”
Refill Philosophy
Jimmy said to the bartender, “I’m not one of them guys that gives a crap whether the glass is half empty or half full. Just fill it with somethin’ good.”
Self-criticism
At least, if I were going to be an asshole, I should have been an eloquent one. Nothing’s more pathetic than a bumbling asshole further frustrated and agitated by just how inarticulate they are.
Rugs
The doctor diagnosed him as being anxious about anxiety. “If there’s nothing to worry about,” she said, “you’ll worry about what to worry about, or wonder what it is you should be worrying about so you don’t get the rug pulled out from under you later.”
Philosophy of Potential
These two things are at war: the desire to be settled, established, accomplished in life, the satisfaction of having realized one’s potential in life and then the fear of being trapped, having squandered that potential, or at least simple disgust at the structuring of life that you could only realize one of your potential selves; and then people make you feel so small because they think that’s who you are, your identity, when really you know you could’ve been so many things. You make possibility reality, and there’s comfort in that; but there’s also a sense of loss: what was dynamic has, in a way, become static.
Hiding from the Stars
It was like standing in the middle of an open field on a clear night, trying to hide from the stars. He must have already known what I had done, just like the stars would have seen me all along as I fruitlessly darted and ducked behind fences and bales of hay – and now all I could really do was to march straight up to him and openly reveal my transgression against his loyal love.
Old Habits
She had a tendency to learn about problems she couldn’t solve and stress herself out over them, and so she decided it was best to take on a job she didn’t really care about in order to decompress for awhile. The result was that she still got stressed—only now it was about things that were completely meaningless and absurd.
A Daughter’s Debts
The book was a love story that made her cry and feel more than any other book had made her feel in a long time. She was a little startled by the realization that if anyone had ever loved her with the kind of overwhelming love described in the book, it was no man, but her mother.
Limitless Transgressions
He asked if he had done something to offend her. Without batting an eyelash, she answered: “Give me a timeframe.”
Afterthought
Sometimes, with a warm kind of gratitude to no one and nothing in particular, I think to myself, “This is so comfortable!” But then I am haunted by the momentary afterthought that the comfort of this, for me, cannot last.
Love’s Labours Lost
There were times, when she would catch the faintest whiff of fresh air, that she could remember with startling clarity the nights spent out on the lake, riding around on the boat, Maura’s hand clasped in her own as they looked up at the stars from their pallets on deck.
But the lake was gone, along with the boat, Maura was as good as gone, with no idea what had been done to keep her safe, and the only memories she had to look forward to making now were how far they could torture her with hard labor and hard blows before she merely phased out of existence.
Love, Attestable
Say not that your love for me is infinite, for infinity is an unproven theory – such that nothing but infinity itself will persist long enough to witness whether or not infinity truly carries on forever. I am not saying that I don’t want you to love me eternally; only that I want your love for me to be unquestionably certain.
Wishful Thinking
She knew the man who broke her heart would be at her best friend’s wedding, and she wished to God she could show up with a fabulous Romanian fiancé of obscure royal descent who would give her ex the evil eye and dance too close to her at the reception. An unfortunate booking accident at the local hotel would have them staying next door to each other, and the ex would toss and turn for several miserable hours trying to ignore the animal screams of ecstasy audible through the paper-thin walls.
Reciprocity
She said she was only interested in reciprocity, and he asked her to define the term. She answered without hesitation: “The price of my surrender is yours.”
A Closet with No Door
He wore red crocodile skin loafers, listened to Elton John, and watched “Queer As Folk” religiously. Still, he couldn’t comprehend why no one seemed terribly surprised when he finally came out.
Slipped In
He had slipped into her mind as easily and unnoticeably as something gets slipped into a drink. And just as dangerously too, because now that he was there, she couldn’t be held liable for irrational behavior.