"I’m carrying a pile of salt under my tongue,
collect bruises in my sleep. In the morning
we patiently make breakfast together,
laugh into our orange juice and later,
driving until the sky turns slate. I know
that I’m getting even harder to love.
Your name is every billboard in this city.
You are in the soft tendons of my knees.
I am in a thrift store and everything is us.
The TV spits out nothing but bad news,
commercials for laser hair removal
and vacuums. Smoking my first cigarette
feels a lot like swimming without
any clothing on. I wanted to text you this,
but your number is lost somewhere
in Brooklyn. When I saw you for the first time
after months of nothing, I couldn’t stop
looking at you, so I didn’t look at you at all.
Even when you love the boy you can't 
scrub him off of you. Even when you love
the boy your heart demands to be a fist."

"We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog’s yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum’s scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother’s retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we. Solipsism binds us together… That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what’s brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd."

"Single people want relationships, settled people wonder if they’re missing out on something, traveling types miss stability, stable ones are restless, old friends want new friends, new friends miss old friends, and basically almost everyone my age has some dangling worry trailing around after them everywhere that they’re somehow not doing everything, that what they’re doing is not altogether the right thing, that they are missing out. … Do not be ashamed. The doubt is natural, and everyone you know – yes, even that person – carries it sometimes too. Allow yourself to be peaceful. Allow yourself satisfaction in what you have. If you really don’t like it, allow yourself permission to make changes."