Sometimes I ask myself if it meant anything at all—me, you, the roast chicken, those two years together that now feel murky and placed under thick fog. You driving to work after one hour of sleep, week after week after week. You going crazy from no sleep, from too much me, from us taking each other’s brain hostage. You and me staying up drinking scotch, playing chess, smoking pack after pack, listening to Kid A, taking baths on E. Me taking up the whole bed every night, me waking up laughing, me screaming in my sleep. Us sleeping through every Saturday. Your love for dates and numbers.

While Tolstoy wrote outdoors,
his goat
would eye him suspiciously,
making sure he wrote nothing
that was anti-goat,

Each joke
is a crack
of thunder,
a rupture
in the sky’s
grammar.

hail, fellow well met, 1
handful, protagonist seen as quite a, 2
happiness as goal, 46
hazards, 56, 75, 113
headstrong, 2
heart: broken, 56; in mouth, 24–28; murmur, 123; of darkness, 307. See also lungs, liver, lights

Pity poor Ebenezer Scrooge. Throwing open his window that nippy December morning, he’s so culturally insensitive as to wish everyone a merry Christmas (Pardon my language!). Had he only known how to celebrate the seasonal festivities in a more thoughtful, less offensive way, he could have shouted “Happy Holidays” at all he met. Scrooge, alas, forgot that lots of people out there are not Christians, don’t know what a Christian is, don’t take being a Christian seriously, regard themselves only as nominal Christians, hate Christians, or have vague ideas at best that something Christian is somehow or other connected with December 25th. That’s a big audience ready to be offended. Be very careful.