On the coldest day of the year, the weather man walks back from the measurement booth across a snowed-over plain, solid as cement and tinted with the pale yellow glow of the northern lights.

She talks about window treatments, how the place is maybe too much for one. Wants me to know she’s not much of a cook, and wants me to smell what’s in her oven and compliment her cooking anyway.

While the tea was steeping, Ms. Darcy unwrapped the package. The book was lovely. It had nice heavy paper and the print was a good size for reading. The cover was glossy and not too showy, and Ms. Darcy thought it would look just right on her shelf.

Homer relaxes in his tan, faded recliner, remote in hand, and watches death unfold on his television.

If there was a single constant in the boy’s life, it was that he had always thrown knives. In his youth he had thrown them only in his mind . . .

“If you guys ever get back together, I’d make him sign a contract.” I smiled, but cautioned, “Not sure that would work.” She answered with emphatic confidence, “You haven’t seen how good I am at writing contracts!"

My mother looked up and began to laugh, it was a nervous tittering, but there was delight in her eyes at the crazy spectacle of our small black puppy eluding, probably taunting all these armed police.

When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.

Henry Ground was a healthy and well adjusted English man who excelled at chess and folk dancing. One day, for no apparent reason, he decided to fill his guinea pig with helium. He carried the animal under the light of the stars into the shed at the bottom of his garden.…

They are really living (they) say things they don't mean . . . Do not know what they say Take the path without heart, seeing the image . . . The moon rises above them It does not move their blood Nothing calls out to their blo

My mystery woman smiles a hidden smile through her mask, and attempts to seduce me with her eyes. She says not a word, but brings up her hand and beckons me with the classic one finger curl that says, “Come hither.” Her eyes make promises, and she turns:

THE LAST THING I WANTED, expected, or needed was to be standing in the doorway of Carly Ray's room, watching her clutch a picture of her father, my old friend Beryl, up to her face. She is so tiny, but at the same time there is something very adult about the way she looks.…

I wrote her a poem.She said, “I hate poetry.” I said, “OK, just read the words then."

I was at the doctor's office, having my blood drawn. I was talking to the medical assistant. She was tying off my arm to tap my vein. She was almost 8 months pregnant with a girl, though her belly stuck out straight in front of her enough to be told she was having a boy.…

We liked the orderly Newtonian/ with its fundamentalist action/ and reaction, its rules