Even The Best Of Us Are At

Your Heart, Mary Karr, He'd Say. His Pen Touched My Sternum, And It Felt For All The World Like The Point Of A Dull Spear As He Said, Your Heart Knows What Your Head Don't. Or Won't.

We Are In The Grip Of Some Big Machine Grinding Us Along. The Force Of It Simplifies Everything. A Weird Calm Settled Over Me From Inside Out. What Is About To Happen Has Stood In Line To Happen. All The Roads Out Of That Instant Have Been Closed, One By One.

I'd Spent Way More Years Worrying About How To Look Like A Poet -- Buying Black Clothes, Smearing On Scarlet Lipstick, Languidly Draping Myself Over Thrift-store Furniture -- Than I Had Learning How To Assemble Words In Some Discernible Order.

For Me, Everything's Too Much And Nothing's Enough.

When You Do Try To Picture The Boys Who Do Ask You Out, They're Absolutely Featureless, Like Old Carvings Eroded By Centuries Of Rain And Wind.