I could never be vegetarian

because I would begin to salivate like a stormdrain each time I passed a mirror. I would stain my shirt. I would turn cannibal. My friends and family and lovers would be sat in the center of their own crosshairs, made by the shallow crux of their collarbones and sternums and the gumdrop hollows of their throats, and my tablemanners are shameful to begin with. Life must end somewhere. If not on my plate, by my hands and by my mouth, then by someone else's. Blame must end somewhere. And if my plate and my hands and my mouth were left empty for too long, with no friends and no family and no lovers handy, then the weaselcolored penitentiary of my teeth would turn on its own tongue and then I would be not only a murderer but a mute. I suppose words, too, must end somewhere.

In school they told us A place for everything, and everything in its place and I have always liked that. The phrase is smooth, smooth and even, even in its weight and its sound and its dishonesty, a creamy tincan cobra, and I have always liked that. That a pale child slick with illness or a grating scraping bank account or a working father's shattered spine, or the would-be moral lighthouse on the corner of everystreet, whose soapbox has left with a mouthful of foam and a voice like a 21-gun Salute, or crows, or malaria - I have always liked the idea that these things have a place. That they can be neatly sorted, and shelved, like books in a library. I am almost certain that words must end somewhere.

They taught poorly with their freshwatervoices while we perched like canaries in our tumblefurnace classrooms, but I learned. Am still learning.

I am learning that even confidence is a kind of resignation

((I'm pretty sure this is some sort of quasi-sequel to the wannabe Parisian from a few months back. Stuff like "I suppose" and "salivate" aren't things that I use a whole lot.

It's weird, tapping into a voice more than once!))