Listening to these people is like listening to trees—sooner or later the tree is sliced open and the watermarks reveal their age.

We stumble on, now, we drain the light from the dark, to make it last. She

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

the harpsichord of the Brooklyn Bridge,

it was nearly all whiteys on Forty-ninth Street. That was Chalktown.

Jazzlyn used to say she loved him like chocolate.

He would use the very moisture in his eyes to test for it.

There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.