Duma Key

a good liar never varies her story.

Remembering forgetting. It’s like looking into a hall of mirrors.

when memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves.

she had whistled for a dog and gotten a wolf.

we fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

“Meantime, do the day and let the day do you!”

I saw her lying on her side, sleeping just as she had as a kid: one hand tucked under her cheek and one knee drawn up almost to her chest. We think we change, but we don’t really—that’s what Wireman says.

Pain is the biggest power of love.

the unconscious mind writes poetry if it’s left alone.

There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.