“By noon, we knew the sun was through with us  
and our small adventure. Even the bloodwort,  
the tall red ferns, and the L-O-V-E scored  
in black paint below the overpass could tell  
we knew nothing of them.”

“What happens when you narrativize something that has that initiatory burden of transness, you take these steps to bring that narrative into actuality—to bring the inside outside.”

“She walks into McDonald’s at 1:00 p.m. She carries two duffel bags and an empty coffee cup as if hoping for a refill. No one knows why, but she comes every day like clockwork.”

“His compositions reinvented classical music, perhaps because he no longer could hear what others were creating.”

“Returning home after her divorce, she moves through airport crowds, her grandmother’s house, and the tight choreography of conversation with her mother—love expressed through food, folded clothes, silence, and superstition.”

It's been cubbyholed for years at a time, but I always knew I would finish it. At times the story was in a form that can hardly be called a draft, it was more in pieces, lying around like a jigsaw puzzle.