Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

“There’s no difference to the outside world between a good guy and a bad guy behaving like a good guy. In fact, I think God loves that second guy a little more.” “Good-person drag,” Cyrus thought out loud. That’s what they called it after that.

How can it get rid of the big ball of rot inside me?

“Maybe you don’t believe God wants you to be happy? God, your mother, poetry, whatever. What makes you so special that everyone else deserves that except you?”

“My being straight passing or whatever.” “Oh sweetheart,” Gabe chuckled, “you think you’re straight passing?”

Get her jade!

“Can you imagine having that kind of faith?” Cyrus asked. “To be that certain of something you’ve never seen? I’m not that certain of anything. I’m not that certain of gravity.” “That certainty is what put worms in their brains, Cyrus. The only people who speak in certainties are zealots and tyrants.”

“Nobody thinks of now as the future past.”

Gilles Deleuze called elegy la grande plainte, “the great complaint,” a way of saying “what is happening is too much for me.”

“Lord, increase my bewilderment.”

My life was a painting I’d been staring at upside-down up until that moment, that moment when Leila wandered in and flipped it right-side up for me.

AAAAAH

“The eye, the angel’s drums.” I paused. “I think I understand.”

Leila and I traded papers so she could escape Iran,

FUCK ME NO

I missed her so frantically that saying “I missed her” isn’t enough. I could feel it in my body, the tips of my fingers and the soft skin of my ankles, in my eyelids.

Separation from what you love best, that is hell.

“She resented ever needing anything from anyone.

They sat for another moment watching the sky curl, churn, like cream in coffee—they

UGH the imagery here

I couldn’t help laughing. I couldn’t help laughing, but laughing didn’t need my help.

:,)))