Sorrow is humbling. I want my pain to be fabulous. I don't need my pain to be worse than anyone else's; I just want it to be strangely, uniquely mine. Art to someone else's breakdown. — Thea Hillman, "Dear Kath

There's so much I should say, so many things I should tell him, but in the end I tell him nothing.I cut a line and my losses, and I light a cigarette.

...feel the fierce way desiretourniquets itself around you andclingsClubland South of Market tweak-chic trannies powder their noses frombullet-shaped compacts and flick their forkedtongues like switchblades as they burn the nightdown bleed day to night to day toMission sidewalks where pythons hidetwenty dollar balloons beneath their tongues whichget bartered in smiles quicker than a coke buzz andtossed out through the cracksCottonmouth kissescamouflage emotions andstrike with a vengeancewhen hewants and shewants and theywant and Iwon'tGenet was right, I supposewhen he wrote "The only wayto avoid the horror of horror isto give in to it"it'sthe nature ofthe economy of thebusiness it's thenature ofthings...

YOU YOU YOUyour eyes, thick as a high school scrapbook crackling and yellow, curling at the edgesa book of myths in which i do not appear.

The movementOf the body isWhere poetryBegins

I felt old. Again. It had been happening a lot lately. I did not live the life of an old lady, but I could hear it beckoning to me, like a mermaid on a rock."— Michelle Tea, "Paris: A