Granta Books

he would later tell interviewers of his memory of his parents lying in bed, holding hands, reading Ulysses to each other

Dave was in the local paper with a picture, hand up, pouncing on a question. His name appeared again that same year when a poem he wrote about Boneyard Creek, an old irrigation ditch that passed behind the local library, shared first prize:
Did you know that rats breed there?
That garbage is their favorite lair.

then retreat into the pack. He threw snowballs at a classmate on his paper route, then ran away when the boy confronted him, then came back out and threw them again. He mocked the boy’s father’s love of flowers.

And he would name his teams after sections of Ulysses: the Wandering Rocks and Oxen of the Sun. Another year he ran drills and any player who botched one had to listen to a section of Wallace’s life story (made up).

Remember this sign, this tree, this broken-down street. Remember it is possible to feel this way. There were twenty days on the calendar, then fifteen, then ten, then the day I packed my car and left. I drove the length of two states, sobbing, heat like a hand against my chest. But I didn’t. I didn’t remember it.

Sometimes at night I conduct interviews with myself.

What do you want?

I don’t know.

What do you want?

I don’t know.

What seems to be the problem?

Just leave me alone

How is that even possible?” the philosopher says. “He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”

She knows. She knows. So it begs the question, doesn’t it? Did she unkind and ungood and untrue him?

When she tells people she might move to the country, they say, “But aren’t you afraid you’re going to get lonely?”

Get?

The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind

What Rilke said: I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.