[JESUS LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANYBODY, BUT HE'S DEAD. NO-ONE COULD EVER LOVE YOU AS MUCH, OR YOU THEM, SO DON'T EVEN TRY. HAVE A NICE LIFE! MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!]

The summer she turned 17, she had to hold all the pieces of herself together with a red ribbon she tore off an old dress. It wound its way around her neck, her heart and her throat. It snaked down to her hips, the curve of her thighs, and wrapped itself

The woman returns from the store with an armload of books. She reads them quickly, one by one, over the course of the next few weeks. But when she opens the last one, the woman frowns in surprise. All the pages in the book are blank. Every single one.

She was a dead bird the morning I found her, wings clipped in dirt and blood vanished into tiny braille maps on concrete.

After our date, my sister, who has a boyfriend, came over with her Weimaraner. I started instantly to tell her of my sex with Nils. She shirked the conversation, tried to change the subject, and more than once, I persisted. I wanted her to hear about it.

"I would date a dog," she says.

I ate a novel. I digested a film reel. I vomited poetry.

She’s waving, Hey, I’m home! Like nothing’s happened. Like weeks haven’t passed since she left.

He sat on a leather couch in the nude, blew smoke rings shaped like wild animals and picked verses out of the thick air.

If you consider yourself neither little nor big, remember that anything large, colossal, macroscopic, ample, sizable, blown-up, bulky, mighty was once small, lesser, minute, tiny, dinky, gnomish, weeny or lilliputian.

It was one of the first things she did after they opened the wall. That’s at least what she told me years later, more than 1000 miles from Berlin.

++

Write a list of what's wrong with everyone else.

She's having trouble remembering the names of things.

She leans to see fresh bruises in dawn's early light.