Layers to cover your ruined body, dark glasses for your ruined eyes.

For years I saw him once a day with his after-work drink and loosened tie, desultorily watering the lawn with his free hand. After a few minutes she’d join him, in her Jackie Kennedy white pants, smoking a cigarette and regarding him through narrowed eyes. When he’d finished his drink he’d throw the ice in the bushes before they went back inside. I never figured out if they hated each other or were deeply in love.

This is the only place on earth where I have final say.

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Can we go back together, one of you still holding my hand, the other on my shoulder, vanishing around an invisible corner, down a leafy suburban street? I am weeping as I type this. You were Snuffy and I was the Count. The sky was a blue that no longer exists. I want my blue back.

Walking around at the end of winter sighting fellow orphans—diminished piles of snow and dog shit—and mouthing a silent greeting. Hello friend, somehow we made it through.

This just in: internet preferable to all previous human endeavor.

The Steiner-Rand hierarchy of acceptance
+3. Reverence
+2. Gratitude
+1. Acceptance
+0. Indifference
–1. Resignation
–2. Resentment
–3. Bitterness

A listing vessel with a massive hole in its bow, drifting at sea. That is me, he thought—miraculously still afloat.

I was not cool. You wanted to be somewhere else. I didn’t understand this at the time, but it helps now.

God: I am that I am.
Popeye: I am what I am.

now that you’re back from LA
now that the leaves are out
now that your tv has broken
now that you’re off the wagon
and you’ve lost your one true friend
which is to say, your cat