“Facebook and news apps were still atwitter with quarantine “it” hobbies. Baking and organizing, cross-stitching and gardening. I was still behind.”

“into a box bursting at the seams. You are slung
neck to neck with people bearing grim,
no-trespassing signs for faces.”

“When the car dips, you can see the city wrapped tight around the Delaware

(so pretty so cold)”

“But then why bother? He’d waited for his brighter future, but it never came. Accepting failure as inevitable, he fell into the water.”

“but when you come out the door
to the sight of your buttonbushes
swaddled in spiderwebs,
you take that as an omen.”

“We imagined our lines snagged
on the decayed corduroy coat
that had held down the drowned boy
everyone in town heard about but no one knew”

“My blink at small hands outstretched on this street
pulls blinds that untie, like twists of a knot”

“It goes without saying that these are, of course, bones from dead animals.”

“Neither the glass window, nor the silk sheets will ever be able to save you when it rains.”

“Today, I watched a small bird fly over the open field where I sat on a park bench.”

“In the woods behind the Cock Block—the strip in town with Pini’s Pizza, Wang’s Chinese, Johnson’s Meats, and Woody’s Liquors—there is a clearing overlooking the marsh”

“Earth got swallowed by a planet-eating space whale.”

“It will hurt, but to have any effect it must remain there for some time. Let the pain flow through you, in time you will accept it.”

“The city around me is darkening into evening, streets glowing in dusk. In this moment, surrounded by strangers and history, I feel timeless”

“Carried powerlessly by my momentum, my prowess, my might, my beauty.”

“In the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows there is the word "Sonder." It is defined as "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”

“I’ll take the hands and backs of the young gods, we’ll level out my heart, we’ll uncarve this wood”

“Neighbor, I’ve got a Solo cup. I press it to the wall behind the toilet; the pipes can be our string.”

“On the Train Through Switzerland

a girl with raven black hair handed me a perfect orange.”

“Sitting on the wide sill of a second floor window of the old farmhouse, alone, there’s no-one else at all.”