There are too many characters in this book I'm reading.
I can't keep track of them all.
How can I care who marries who, or what they wear?
Nevertheless, each time one disappears, I feel a brief, sharp grief,
knowing they will not return.

This is how a boat drifts out to sea from shore.
It gets distracted and detached, pulled this way and that by currents.
Eventually, not even pain can guide it home.

I will tell you this right now: Cincinnati
has not been a great success for me.
My allergic reaction to small talk has ensured
that I don't get asked to parties anymore.
My deep curiosity about other people has gone unslaked.

How did Ellen, who hates to be touched, get pregnant?
Who is Sam in love with? Is Emily gay?
What does my neighbor do at 3 a.m., when his office light is on?
Was I wrong to think of life as work?

"Sing me a song about the world!"
says the therapist, as he looks out at the thunder and the rain,
a little glum about his only half-effective science.
He has no cured clients.

The moon shines down from the black November sky.
The tide rises like a sweeping, white-ruffed arm,
erasing all the pages that have come before.
The evidence accumulates that nobody is watching over us,

and gradually, as the streets and houses drift toward night,
all the words inside them close their eyes;
the sentences coil up like snakes and sleep.

It's just me now and my famous aching heart
under the stars — my heart that keeps moving like a searchlight
in its longing for the hearts of other people,
who in a sense, already live there, in my heart,

and keep it turning.