A friend told me that she always reads the first and last paragraphs of books before deciding whether or not to dive in. “If they can’t hook me, and then stick the landing, they’re not worth it.” I’m with her. Books are a huge time commitment. So are television shows.
For You
It was never New York. Not dead enough. There were only four of them in the center of the coffee shop, white. The looming dudes flanked the females and laid out the brunette’s poor taste. We hadn’t yet learned her name. When the dude grabbed the floor things took a turn for the psycho-sexual, the oedipal, and we were forced to listen. A fifth friend, soaked, entered. No one wanted this. This guy says hello I want to kill myself. The bride burst in on a coincidental dude cue. From then on, we were the bride, the sixth. She met everyone, decaf.
They left the keys and left. The song in the deserted apartment was Embryonic Journey, because everyone who was ever going to be and have babies had been and had babies, and because that’s all. Now the rent would be completely out of control. There was a wall from which we watched, a wall we couldn’t turn to see. From the wall, one last time, we asked: could I be anymore empty?