Excerpt: Words, Hands, Hearts

--random excerpts, in no particular order.

"As I look around, I notice he's eating a bagel. My son seems to always have a bagel, for some unknown reason, coming from some unknown source."

"Your damage control never worked, Luke. You're damaged and I don't know if I can repair you."

"I'm a good son, will you love me now?"

"“Sometimes I don't think I ever was that short,” I comment off-handedly.
Stoner Boy abruptly looks away. “Sometimes I don't think...” he says, pausing in the middle of his sentence. “that I was ever that young.”"

"If you stay out late enough, you can ignore the pain. If you stay out strong enough, you can taste the rain."

"Although, really, what sort of self-respecting high schooler brings a JUICE BOX for lunch?"

"when Danny whats his name – okay so his name really IS Danny and just Danny, but it's still fun to say"

"There's going to be hell when I get home, but I don't have to go home for like, another week until the doctor is sure I'm not dead. Am I dead? Sometimes I wonder a little."

"I fell down the stairs. I fall down a lot of stairs. I probably even fall up the stairs."

"I only look back once and I know that's not a tear"

"Like a peace offering, the boy whose name she still doesn't know meets her eyes before following her son up to his room."

"When I get
home
I throw
my bag on the chair
the red and blue one
that the cat has always
liked to sit in
her name is Buttons
I like her a lot
she is the best cat in
the world" --Named after Android's cat, respectivley.

"like he's been walking
in the rain
except it's not
rainy outside"

"Wish someone
would
just let me
sleep
for a
little
while."

"Okay, go away now, see you later!"

"“So This Important List,”
“What important list?” he asks, baffled.
“The one that I'm holding in my hands, you idiot.”
“Ah. So – this important list --”
“I'm about to tell you about this important list.”
“Right. Carry on, then.”
“I'm trying to.”
“Well, don't let me stop you.”
“So, this important list,”
“You already said that.”
“I know. I'm restating it.”
“Right. Carry on, then.”"

"They gave me new clothes, too
ones that don't smell
of burning corn husks."

"I never did a jigsaw puzzle either."

"I thanked them until they told me to shut up already, they got the point."

"He enjoys soup. Admittedly, I enjoy soup as well, but he really loves soup. I mean, soup is like his ultimate goal in life. To drink soup. Eat soup. Have soup. Whatever. Although that's a pretty sad goal in life, don't you think? To have soup. I don't know, you could like, get a job and then collect soup, except you'd never have that great of a collection of soup because you'd keep eating and or drinking it. Er, having it. You'd keep having soup. Except that sounds weird. Soup is just such a weird noun. You would have, like, vintage soup from the 1980's and collect Campbell's labels or something. And that would just be your entire life. And then you could, like, get a job in the soup factory, and drink soup. All day long. You could be like the national soup - -- tester. Soup taste tester. That would be such a cool job. The national soup tester. National soup taste tester. And you could hand out little business cards when people asked for them and it would say BEST SOUP TASTE TESTER, NATIONALLY ACCLAIMED IN THIS COUNTRY and then when you went to Europe or wherever you would go to these giant soup taste tester conventions and you would just like, get together and talk about soup all day, and drink and or eat soup and have soup and cook soup, and then you'd, like, talk about the quality of various sorts of spoons, and you would like, devour soup all day long and think in soup like thoughts and you would have like, special soup bowls and drink soup and have soup and eat soup and talk about the nutritional value of soup and ramble about soup and you would just talk and talk and talk and talk about soup. And you could get into national soup drinking soup eating – soup having contests and you could win like more cans of soup and collect all that vintage soup and become an amazing soup – loving soup having person and your wonderful job of sheer amazingness would just be soup eater soup drinker soup haver and you would just drink and eat and read like a lot of books about soup and at those soup eating having drinking conventions, like big huge soup conventions of soup people, you would not only eat slash drink slash have soup you would like get together and talk about soup and make soup and create new sorts or soup and talk about your experiences of soup and the differences between hot soup and cold soup, like the difference between cold cereal and hot cereal, and you would just drink and eat and have soup and talk about soup and talk about your soup related jobs and create giant soup fan clubs and make soup pie and soup cake and when you went to like, Antarctica, you would introduce all the penguins and the polar bears to soup, and you would make this really cool, like, hybrid soup that wouldn't freeze in this temperature 'cause it's so cold there, and then you would like, create giant soup bowls full of soup and give them to the poor soup deprived nations of this world. Like Africa. And you would appreciate the soups that everyone else hates, and you would, like, discuss the fine differences between different national makers of lentil soup and lentil soup and share soup related secrets with everyone and you would appreciate soup for its true worth not just another sort of food, and you would just drink and eat soup and you could talk about soup. And you would have like a thousand little facts about soup like a bunch of different facts and stuff and and and – they would all eat different sorts of soups, like ginataan soup, oshiruko soup, tong sui soup, winter melon soup, ajiaco soup, avegolomono soup, bird's nest soup, borscht, boillabaisse soup, bisque soup, caldo verde soup, callaoo soup, sour soup, cock – a – leekie soup, clam chowder, Cullen Skink soup, egg drop soup, etrog soup, Maryland crab soup, Faki soupa, fanesca soup, fasolada soup, fufu soup, egasi soup, goulash soup, gumbo soup, lagman soup, lentil soup, leek soup, Menudo soup, Minestrone soup, miso soup, mullatgatawni soup, noodle soup, pasta soup, snert soup, pea soup, sausage soup, Philadelphia Pepper Pot soup, pserasoupa soup, pho soup, revithia soup, Scotch broth soup, she – crab soup, shchav soup, solyanka soup, Tarator soup, trahana soup, tomato soup, vicchiyoussane soup, waterzooii soup, zurek soup, alphabet soup, even primordial soup, stone soup, duck soup, word soup, tag soup, soup to nuts! -- They'd do all that soup – related stuff. ...Did I carry that metaphor too far?" -- a nice 783 word ramble.