Self-defeating as your mind is self-defeating, he said. Tenacious as my mind is tenacious. Such immodesty, I said. My mind is not a closed room. Mine has more windows, he said. What is outside your windows? All the good things you can’t see. Like what? A garden of superlative adjectives. A path paved with lively adverbs. Poems without themes. Songs without names. There are ways to live not as a noun, or inside a noun, or among other nouns.
