“Bits of her cracked. Broke off and took up residence in the foreign lands she roamed. They would grow and culture. She would turn down lost avenues and find her laughter baked into the brick street plains. Moments from her childhood would play out in the bloom of some short-lived butterfly parade. . . .”
“In evenings the boys return from bars leaning against one another. Cary is eternally pissed at Jessie for abandoning him. Like his father. And for smashing him in the face. Jessie shouts back. That he’s pissed because Cary is so loud. And won’t give rehab a real chance. And that he didn’t abandon Cary. He was put in prison. Which wasn’t fucking fun. And that smashing Cary was just to shut him off for a bit. . . .”
“When he loses ten pounds. Does eleven pushups, attempts a yoga position other than the corpse pose, sprints to the next crack in the sidewalk. Takes his shirt off to swim. Hums the theme to Magnum, P.I. and promises to get his mind right. . . .”
“Because I was not really in love with the woman with whom I shared my brother’s basement. Because I didn’t really mind living in my brother’s basement. Because I stared out at those ocean fields and pot lid sky and found no blueprint for any damn thing. Because I spent most mornings on the edge of hungover dreams, dozing off in the penumbras of your daily routine. Preemptively squashing the multitude of crawlers in the chaff, before they had an inkling to bite. . . .”