“The only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.”
“He fell in love twice that year, all the flowers in the South.
Held tight two horses galloping in opposite directions. Found himself on the ground. The dust, the burn. The sky, a shined pair of boots. He wore the heels through. Kept wearing them.
Hung his shoes over the lamp.
The night held pearl necklaces by the fistful---sometimes a tease,
sometimes the exhaling of a perfect shape. He wrote poems
about what this told him. His chest filled
with a heavy lump of mineral
that pulled at the metal of the sky.”
