Familiaris

by David Wroblewski

“It is your first and last duty in this life,” he wrote, “not to be an idiot.”

“Family’s hell, ain’t it?” he said. “First you don’t want to go, then you don’t want to leave. Then you can’t wait to leave. Then you’re ripped up all over again.

Whiskey tasted like something squeezed out of an oak plank, like mentholated gasoline. Brandy was composed of equal parts sunlight and lava. Where whiskey came home looking for an argument, brandy noticed how truly simpatico you were. Brandy liked you so much it hugged your esophagus like a python.

Never lift what can be rolled; never roll what can be carted; never cart what you didn’t need in the first place.

There is no such thing as misbehavior. Only behavior.

“My mother used to tell me stories about snowstorms from when she was a little girl. She said afterward you’d always hear that someone got lost coming home and froze to death. Or fell through the ice and drowned. Or their house burned down because they ran the stove too hot. She said she remembered winters that made a person feel hunted, and for the first time I think I know what she meant. This morning this storm didn’t seem so terrible, just dramatic. This afternoon it feels like it wants to kill us.”

You can never watch too many pups climb through the straw for the first time, but there are just so many dogs you can bear to watch die.

just an old farm, decently well-kept, though always urgently in need of some repair as the world beat against it like a tide onto a beach.

There isn’t a sentence without the word I in it. I, Me, My, Mine. Humble, humble, humble. He’s so humble he had to print an essay in the newspaper to tell people about it.”

There was one fun thing in the world and that was you.

It’s about nine o’clock in the morning now, and the hangover is tremendous. Approaching polio.