We learned to dance beneath a gazebo / in Spring Lake Park / We were fourteen

I was more annoyed at the scream, the icy air around us and our eventual destination–his parents, the club, small talk, all that drunken insignia.

Why is there a heavy weight and a chain and a padlock in her woodstove? Because, she says to herself, slightly hysterically, because this is yet another thing that you must carry. Why? Because life is full of chains and padlocks and heavy weights. Hea

And as you try to read, he appears. No, not in front of you, but somewhere just behind your eyes. You hear the sound at the end of an argument, just before the kiss; you see a shirt fall to the ground in late summer; you watch him read as his mouth

... if they called her Mother, would she take them home and raise them?

"Being honest with me," said her teacher, "will hopefully allow you to be honest with yourself--writing is about being honest, and articulating that honesty." It sounded like a riddle, and her teacher looked at her with the sanctimony of a wizard.

Robbie Lange closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. Yawning, he looked out the window into the black night. Another evening at the office, he thought. He counted the other lit windows in the skyscrapers around his building. “Goodnight, everyone

Fergus Winston, a former accountant from New York, finds himself mixed up in the middle of a trafficking operation in small town Iowa.

When I was a kid, I was terrified of dying in a bombing, which is strange, really, because I lived in Long Island, which has relatively few bombings to speak of.

My father's heart stumbles like a punch drunk fighter. I don't notice until I'm bending over him to help him up. He's lying a little down the hill from his truck, his door open, the motor still running. The…

He looked straight at her, not to challenge her, but to better gauge what it was she would throw at him. Her eyes always darted to the thing right before her red, swollen fingers snatched at it, like a thing possessed.

Evening was drawing nigh and Mosby's horse had tired from the daylong ride.

It’s nice, but, it’s weird not being in love, or maybe in love, sometimes in love. (Or, not in love. Frankly, we might be not in love.) Or, both of us might be. Or, only one of us might be. (Good lord, I hope it’s never me.)

“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.

Their love was doomed at the onset, yet they engaged in it anyway, heedless of the numerous error messages and critical runtime failures. Abort, Retry, Fail? They selected Retry over and over.