Janet Fitch

Out the window, the glow of the Hollywood sign was slightly blurred with June fog, a soft wetness on the hills raising the smell of sage and chamise, moisture wiping the glass with dreams.

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it.

We stopped for doughnuts, startling a convention of parking lot pigeons that rose in a great flickering wheel of dark and light grays, taking the stale morning sun on their wings, the freshness already bled from the air.

Loneliness is the human condition, get used to it.

“We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental.”

She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress

Didn’t they know they were tying their mothers to the ground? Weren’t chains ashamed of their prisoners

I was, a dog she could tie in front of the store, a parrot on her shoulder

Beauty was my mother’s law, her religion. You could do anything you wanted, as long as you were beautiful, as long as you did things beautifully

“Men,” she said. “No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.”