Why We Broke Up

by Daniel Handler

I liked that, all of my feelings. “Every last one?”

the thing with your heart’s desire is that your heart doesn’t even know what it desires until it turns up.

I want what can’t possibly happen, and that is why we broke up.

those nights on the phone, everything we said until late became later and then later and very late and finally to go to bed with my ear warm and worn and red from holding the phone close close close so as not to miss a word of what it was, because who cared how tired I was in the humdrum slave drive of our days without each other. I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you,

I wanted to watch you forever, or sleep beside you forever, or sleep forever while you woke and watched me, something forever anyway.