I'm Always Happy," Sasha Said.

When The Clock Stops On A Life, All Things Emanating From It Become Precious, Finite, And Cordoned Off For Preservation. Each Aspect Of The Dead Person Is Removed From The Flux Of The Everyday, Which, Of Course, Is Where We Miss Him Most. The Quarantine Around Death Makes It Feel Unlucky And Wrong--a Freakish Incursion--and The Dead, Thus Quarantined, Come To Seem More Dead Than They Already Are.... Borrowing From The Dead Is A Way Of Keeping Them Engaged In Life's Daily Transactions--in Other Words, Alive.

...water Laughing Softly Down A Black Stone Wall.

We Stand There, Quiet. My Questions All Seem Wrong: How Did You Get So Old? Was It All At Once, In A Day, Or Did You Peter Out Bit By Bit? When Did You Stop Having Parties? Did Everyone Else Get Old Too, Or Was It Just You? Are Other People Still Here, Hiding In The Palm Trees Or Holding Their Breath Underwater? When Did You Last Swim Your Laps? Do Your Bones Hurt? Did You Know This Was Coming And Hide That You Knew, Or Did It Ambush You From Behind?

I Felt No Shame In These Activities, Because I Understood What Almost No One Else Seemed To Grasp: That There Was Only An Infinitesimal Difference, A Difference So Small That It Barely Existed Except As A Figment Of The Human Imagination, Between Working In A Tall Green Glass Building On Park Avenue And Collecting Litter In A Park. In Fact, There May Have Been No Difference At All.

We Live In A Moment And A Culture When Reading Is Really Endangered. There's Simply No Way To Write Well, Though, If You're Not Reading Well.