Sep 15, 2017
Black Diamond
“I didn’t have to read the papers to know who he was.”
We knew the things the Yale boys said about us, as if we were zombies. Still, we sold them our drugs.
“I haven’t been dating other people,” said Alexander. “Only Daves.”
Did you know that snail shells and the inner ear follow the same spiral? That is how we know the snails are listening.
“The thing I wonder about most is how did it happen, the thing that happened on Taco Night.”
“There is a difference between a choice and a wish. We were never asked what we wished for.”
“It’s not that we don’t remember what it was like before the sound. If you asked us, we could tell you.”
“I do not tell him that sometimes when he touches my breasts I feel very sad.”
She drank a bottle of poison. It must have been household cleaner. His poem doesn’t specify.
“Someday he’ll meet a fate I didn’t think of, and that will be my fault, too.”
Everything seemed like a metaphor, as if I was a teenager or a poet.
In Cairo, teenagers—literal and figurative—were in control of everything.
The classified ad said only PHONE WORK and a number. “Look,” he said. “It’s not what anybody’d call honest work.”
“This was her punishment for accepting everything and staying quiet.”
