For Sale: The World

• Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children.


• The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake.


• Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children.


• I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones:


• This place could be beautiful, right?