Writers Will Be Judged By

What Good Are Insights? They Only Make Things Worse.

That Morning She Pours Teacher's Over My Belly And Licks It Off. That Afternoon She Tries To Jump Out The Window.

It's Akin To Style, What I'm Talking About, But It Isn't Style Alone. It Is The Writer's Particular And Unmistakable Signature On Everything He Writes. It Is His World And No Other. This Is One Of The Things That Distinguishes One Writer From Another. Not Talent. There's Plenty Of That Around. But A Writer Who Has Some Special Way Of Looking At Things And Who Gives Artistic Expression To That Way Of Looking: That Writer May Be Around For A Time.

I Loved You So Much Once. I Did. More Than Anything In The Whole Wide World. Imagine That. What A Laugh That Is Now. Can You Believe It? We Were So Intimate Once Upon A Time I Can't Believe It Now. The Memory Of Being That Intimate With Somebody. We Were So Intimate I Could Puke. I Can't Imagine Ever Being That Intimate With Somebody Else. I Haven't Been.

But He Stays By The Window, Remembering That Life. They Had Laughed. They Had Leaned On Each Other And Laughed Until The Tears Had Come, While Everything Else—the Cold And Where He'd Go In It—was Outside, For A While Anyway.