—LAST YEAR WAS VERY COMPLICATED

 

 

100 Boyfriends—Brontez Purnell

 

 

--I have always been in the practice of being unnoticed.

 

--I don’t even recall an imaginary friend—it was just me.

 

--Sex is just light points on a grid, stars in the Milky Way, but really, the ether holding them all together is the waiting.

 

--Math is the most manipulated of all sciences, and memory is even shakier.

 

--It is always the small victories in life that speak power to truth.

 

--The world is a lot clearer without alcohol.

 

--I don’t know how to explain to him that I’m not just high on drugs. I AM DRUGS.

 

--Fresh from a blackout dream, I am a ghost, not afraid anymore.

 

--Just by themselves the words “true” and “love” are pretty sturdy concepts. Put together they can knock down any man who’s lonely enough to believe a lie as long as it’s said politely.

 

--“TRUE LOVE? DAMN! WHAT ABOUT ME, BITCH?

 

--This had been the same mistake I always made, that is, expecting more.

 

--What does love feel like? I’d imagine a rush, or, as a poet put it, “twenty million tom-toms.”

 

--Incoherence; the point where you are in the middle of making something and it no longer looks like art to you.

 

--I looked to my boyfriend for eye contact, because what else is a boyfriend for but to share in mutual epiphany?

 

--“You never stop looking like art to me.”

 

--Even an incoherent beat is still a beat.

 

--I love my bed because no one can hurt me here.

 

--The open window reminds me of that saying, “Where God closes a door, He opens a window,” but all I can think about is, like, But wait, the window is on the fifth floor and the house is on fire. To which the Almighty replies, “That’s just some GOD humor—good luck!

 

--I was too young to know that all men who want to extract something from you generally have the sweetest touch.

 

--It’s a short time to be here, and a long time to be gone.