Back when they were younger, David was always gushing about every little thing in his head, and his openness appealed to her as much as his muscular frame did. But after that year they spent apart, he was always ... smiling. Smiling and vague.

I remember meeting you many years later.

Now, at last, she finds what she's been searching for. Worms. Like bitty pale larva, like half-moons of air trapped under fingernails. She thinks she sees one twitch; she blinks more furiously and hates herself for it.

he knows that his wife knows. she can smell the adverbs on his tongue in the mornings. but he cannot get through another evening in that house without consonants.

Scavenge at that address only if you feel possessed of great courage, a profound faith in resurrection or reincarnation, or an impatient desire for a premature date with certain death.

Ellen decided to soft-pedal the one month to live thing. Really, there was barely time for the patient to read Ellen's brochure.

Grey would rather be in the trees or down by the river. When a wind comes up, he grabs the wooly blanket from the hook in the barn and calls Phoebe. They stretch the blanket out between them and sail into the grassy meadow that slopes down the hill from t

"Some Purgatory in order, innit?"

My best friend died yesterday. His name was Franklin Seever, but we all called him Lin. It started when we were in Little League. There were two Franklins on the team so Coach, who was my dad, called the fat one Frank and my best friend Lin.

Your grandmother has gotten old, in that way where one day you wake up, and you realize that someone you've been looking at your whole life suddenly looks different. That hands which used to gently place band-aids on scraped knees are…

You may think you've tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting. Mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor.

A blonde girl, her youth evident beneath a cosmetic mask of bruised eye shadow and plum lipstick, claims the seat beside me on a train. A radiant six month-old gazes out from her hip, awe-struck at life, as my own son must have been at that age. I never e

Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of

He is sitting in his bedroom trying to decide what to wear. He has an appointment at five. If he wants to make it he has to either catch the bus, which comes in about fifteen minutes, or drive in. If he wants to drive in he needs to put petrol in his car,

When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it.