Jane Avrich

To know our refuse is to know ourselves. We mark our own trail from past to present with what we've used and consumed, fondled, rejected, outgrown.

Only now, when it is too late, do I long for Dearth. I was a misbegotten child of bad blood and bile, and I mistook my own orneriness for cleverness. I presumed to know what happiness was - something I could possess, like a marble, or a man. Something I could only find elsewhere. But just when I started to find it at home, I outfoxed myself and lost it forever.