Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.

Later, your father stared, confused, at the empty spot where the wall paint layers ended in the shape of the old machines. He stopped coming in.

the beeps, rhythmic, tell us that you're still with us

The lungs forsake their love of breath. The arms/ resist throwing off the small weight of sheets.

Quimby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, lads, there must be a thousan’ ways to die at sea! I’ve made th’ Atlantic passage a good many time; lemme recount some manners of death I’ve witnessed with mine own eyes.”

Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.

Floating along the ebbs of the ocean,toward the horizon, where time has no say,an end that will never be reached.

Sometimes one person's shelter is another person's storm.

The trees would answer with a creak and a crackle. Fall was near, a rotten apple.

I figure maybe I’m mostly alone; they are all running down staircases or falling down fire escapes, some of them naked, some of them with towels, mostly probably naked though.

It doesn't take a genius to figure how he sank, in the drink, like Jeff Buckley. Like a stone.

When we talked about the lasagna, we were, I see now, talking about different things. I.e., I was talking about lasagna, and you were talking about almost everything but. You weren't talking about the dry, burnt noodles or…

Roanne hungered. Memory had ruled her forever. Shards really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows. Inside the church, those pairs of short…

His mother named him Far because she had high hopes for him

The old man sat in the run-down shack, nursing his lobol-weed tea, and cursing the bitter cold wind outside.