Junot Díaz - This is How You Lose Her (2012)

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You said i could call you when i wanted but that you wouldn't call me. you have to decide where and when, you said. if you leave it up to me i'll want to see you every day. At least you were honest, which is more than i can say for me.

Junot Díaz
Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

Junot Díaz
She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

Junot Díaz
The truth is there ain't no relationship in the world that doesn't hit turbulence.

Junot Díaz
Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.

Junot Díaz
I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

Junot Díaz
You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.

Junot Díaz
Clavo saca clavo. Nothing sacas nothing, you reply. No one will ever be like her.

Junot Díaz
Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel.

Junot Díaz
You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.

Junot Díaz
I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other time I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it's all wrong. I'm sorry, he'll say. I have to leave now.

Junot Díaz
I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.

Junot Díaz
Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.

Junot Díaz
She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.

Junot Díaz
You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

Junot Díaz
Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth.

Junot Díaz
But back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.

Junot Díaz
In another universe I probably came out OK, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead.

Junot Díaz
I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I'm with you I have this sense that you want something from me.

Junot Díaz
You whispered my full name and we fell asleep in each other's arms and I remember how the next morning you were gone, completely gone, and nothing in my bed or the house could have proven otherwise.

Junot Díaz
You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?

Junot Díaz
And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.

Junot Díaz
I'm like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.

Junot Díaz
That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.

Junot Díaz
When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets.

Junot Díaz
You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.

Junot Díaz