—LIKE KEYS IN THE SOFA, LIKE A WALLET IN THE BACK SEAT, LIKE WORRYING ABOUT ANY BAD THING THAT HASN’T HAPPENED YET

   

Florida—Lauren Groff

 

--It is astonishing how people live, the messes they sustain.

 

--Worse than being in a storm was not knowing what the storm was doing.

 

--Stop waiting for someone to save you. Humanity can’t even save itself.

 

--There are bad guys everywhere, you know?

 

--No, she said. There’s no story. I guess I’m on vacation from my life.

 

--If pretty words couldn’t save her, the losing them, too, was all for the best.

 

--He kissed like a boy prone to anxiety attacks.

 

--Words were space carved out of life, warm and safe.

 

--Oh, but she loves the language in her mouth, the silk and bone of it, the bright vowels and the beautiful shapes a mouth makes to speak.

 

--There you go, she says. I’m the toughest mother in the whole world. I won’t let anybody hurt you, she says, and she is either lying or not, it is hard to tell, because this promise is so complicated, the future so dark.

 

--Another fucking writer; just what the world needs.

 

 

 

Killing Floor—Ai

 

--I hear my footsteps running after me, but I am already gone.

 

--Your eyes, two tiny bowls of tar because death pressed his black face against yours.

 

--Night is coming, shouldering a sack of misdeeds that glow in the dark. Night and the carnival. Night and the Devil.

 

--Tonight I let my woman die. She also had arms, legs, fingers, all the unimportant things.

 

--I’m not afraid of any sonofabitch on two feet. I fire, then jam the barrel in mouth. Not even you, motherfucker, not even you.

 

--Dying doesn’t end anything.

 

--When I catch him, I’ll cut him up. I’ll start with his feet and give them to you to wear as earrings. Talk to me. I hear nothing but the monkeys squealing above me.

 

--On the train back from Germany, that smell and a voice whispering, dance with me baby, all night long.