1. I have to stop when I catch myself mentally titling poems about how you and I do not belong together.
2. Doomed like your mother, doomed like your father—don’t think it, don’t think it—loneliness is my birthright, loneliness is my bride.
3. This is a mania, this is a phobia. Tag your neuroses and track them, keep track of them.
4. Remember _______, think what happened to _______.
5. You speak of your friend like she’s dead.
6. She is dead, though, only wakes up now and then to bury herself.
7. What do you mean?
8. I mean she reaches out with one arm from her shallow grave, and she buries herself. Great fistfuls of dirt.
9. But?
10. But she was not a huntress.
11. And so?
12. And so it got the best of her.
13. Well, you tell me what I ought to see
when I self-perceive
Would you lie to me?
14. No, you’re a truth-teller, heart-sweller.
15. The Age of Huts, man, I never had it in me. I’m all ravens and bell-jars.