Have you heard this yet? The daughter flew home to care for the mother, whose pump is still tick ticking—though now with aid—which means she leaves the kitchen when the microwave clicks on.

Another noise, softer than the first: swish, thud. You are still. The house is very loud tonight.

this is where we end -- the exorbitant eye of forgotten days.

We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.

Lying on a high seat in the south study, this is what I see:

That streetcar named Desire, it don't hardly stop for me no more. Leastwise not while I'm awake, and I don't have to be telling no nosy aides why I make them noises in my sleep.

I'm getting self-righteous here, Dear Reader . . . [hey! wait a second! this is my diary! what are you doing, looking at it, dude! Hit the road! Scram! Vamoose!]

He brought me flowers once, three wilted carnations I put in water, though the sight of them made me uneasy. He brought me pictures once, too, of three sisters—ten, twelve, fourteen—straddling dirt bikes. He touched my shoulder once, as I edited pictures …

I want to read a story that ends unhappily ever after: one where the bad guy wins and no one gets the girl.

Galloping people, tangled in ballets of hot love, weaving in and out, making a canvas of it.

It was your present world that seemed more than mad to me. Your polished stiff brown shoes that always squeaked like mice, while the latest rude Bombers bubbled up in their comfortable Dart-board garages like apple pies…

On the coldest day of the year, the weather man walks back from the measurement booth across a snowed-over plain, solid as cement and tinted with the pale yellow glow of the northern lights.

Suddenly something clicked.

She calls me by my name. She says I am her daughter.

Sometimes you have to go wild; you have just to go fucking nuts. You do.