I Guess Love Is The Real Suspension

It Scares Me How Fast I Go From Disliking To Loving Him, And I Wonder If It’s This Way For Everyone.

Nice,' I Say, Realizing Only Afterward That I've Mimicked Her, A Bad Habit Of Mine; I'm Like One Of Those Animals That Imitates Its Predators To Survive.

With So Much Sky And So Much River, You Couldn't Help Seeing The Big Picture. It Was What You Already Knew, But Crowding Into The Subway Or Rushing To A Movie, You Only Saw It For A Second, And Close Up. Now I Took A Good Long Look. I'd Always Heard You Couldn't See Stars In Manhattan Because Of All The Lights. But Here They All Were. Here Was My Night In Shining Armor.

Up Until That Moment, I'd Been At The Earliest Stage Of Love, When You Feel It Will Turn You Into The Better Person You Want To Be. Now, His Gentle Voice And Sage Advice Took Me To A Later Stage: I Felt I Needed To Pretend To Be A Better Person Than I Was So He'd Keep Loving Me. This Was Hard Because It Made Me Hate Him.

I Tried To Avoid Mimi. Her Presence Seemed To Call Forth Every Rejection I'd Ever Experienced-the Teachers Who'd Looked At Me As Though I Held No Promise, The Boys Who Didn't Like Me Back. Around Her, I Became Fourteen Again.