“Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful dose I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.”
— Alfred Lord Tennyson (Maud, and other poems)

Matt stood there, holding my hand, as I wrestled with ‘should’ and ‘might’ and ‘can’t’ and ‘want’ and he stared at me for a moment. Then he let go of my hand. “You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone about this,” he said. I couldn’t talk, so I just shook my head ‘no’. [...]

Scott phoned my grandmother’s house one evening and asked if I was interested in going to a movie. I was. Oh God, I was interested in going to a movie. I was interested in going to ALL of the movies. I would sit in every seat in that ridiculous little sticky-floored theatre, and I would [...]

The summer I was fifteen, the very last thing I wanted to do was to live on the farm in the hot shoebox of a pull-behind trailer with my mother who chain smoked and drank beer all day with vodka chasers and my father who didn’t believe I could do the work I asked him [...]