“Every time, it’s the same. A man hands me a golden scarab.”

It was in that moment at thirteen—eyes on what predated me, fear in my heart and breath knocked out my lungs—that I came closest to being like God.

“My dad is pretty nuts too,” I said. “He thinks I’m going to be a C-E-O. He thinks that See-Eo is a word in the dictionary that means: ‘guy who funds his gambling addiction.’”

I stop crying in the hospital lobby, because there I am confronted with companions in wailing I cannot compete with. Women crying, squeezing snot from their noses with their thumb and forefinger and flinging it at the ground.

there are certain kinds of sorrow which lose their humanity once exposed. for this reason, a story is a weapon insofar as it promises to uncover, transcend, manifest.

Ask about the truth. Then ask, again, about the romance. Know that one might cancel out the other. Do not ask any more questions. Count backwards, three to one. Desire more.