Bokelskere.no

The wife watched her neighbor get fat over the next year. The Germans have a word for that. Kummerspeck. Literally, grief bacon.

She says every marriage is jerry-rigged. Even the ones that look reasonable from the outside are held together inside with chewing gum and wire and string.

When we met, he wore glasses he'd had for fifteen years. I had the same bangs I did in college. I used to plot to break those glasses secretly, but I never told him how much I hated them until the day he came home with new ones.
I think it was a year later that I grew out my bangs. When they were finally gone, he said, "I've always hated bangs actually."

Our beautiful Italian babysitter tells me she broke up with her boyfriend. I know him, a serious young musician who adored her. "What did he do?" I say. She makes herself a cup of tea. "He cried like a clown."

There is a story about a prisoner at Alcatraz who spent his nights in solitary confinement dropping a button on the floor then trying to find it again in the dark. Each night, in this manner, he passed the hours until dawn. I do not have a button. In all other respects, my nights are the same.