More on: Essays

Over their caravan, a banner emblazoned with the words of their father: That we may live and not die.

It had been four months since we’d run out of money. Somehow, we were still afloat.

In no world was there enough medication, technology, or manpower to keep everyone alive.

Even though Aylon painted it in 1978, there were still oil drops around the outside of the frame. The painting appeared to drip.

The insides of our mothers’ bodies are the only places that are most certainly past. From then on, from there on, every room is just an echo of that first, red room.

Still, the novels and histories of madness couldn’t hold a candle—well, maybe Plath could—to stories of the Complete Nervous Breakdown I’d heard throughout childhood. My grandmother always had a story about somebody she knew who’d broken down.

I think Hart wanted—he was nothing if not a man of magnificent and consuming desires—the wrong things, or things to which he was not quite entitled. I have wanted them too