They found it naught however as it was lost at metro stops, canceled appointments and in ever dimming light that failed to reflect what was instead of what could have been.

It was the middle of May when I found out my teacher was screwing my mother.

Caster had always imagined the Consensus as a big room, as big as the world, filled with white space and people with quantum wings, flitting about, creating information. There were tinted bubbles for people to share for privacy, and the lights never went

I miss Mother gentling the small of my back. She has forgotten me. Her little girl. Whose thumb she fussed over when a rose thorn scratched it and blood spilled like a secret. Whose smile she said was her morning sunshine, whose hug was incense. I yearn for her lips…

Everybody called her The Crier because from time to time we would hear her crying.

He was choking on the fumes.

Snipers wear camouflage clothing to avoid being seen. It wouldn’t do for a sniper to be seen because then the sniper might become the snipee.

Jojo dolls & basketballs a mindflex & pick-up sticks Parcheesi and—no, not Parcheesi a supersoaker, a Care Bear

Things don't always go to plan. Gem knew what people would have said back then, of course. She wasn't stupid.

She allowed him to wash her hair. Touching it in a wet state, running his hands through it in a soapy state, wringing the water out when he was finished—he was ecstatic.

In those years, you and I were told to leap for a world suffused with sound and industry.

Microscopic purposes emerged// with their combinations and permutations

Harpo was there with his wife. Harpo’s girlfriend came up behind the couch where I was sitting, and I ran my hand up her leg underneath her dress.

The Rapture comes and goes unannounced in carbonated soda bubbles spicing the air.

my maddening pyromaniac,/ you're burning up my heart/ so open up your broad-toothed mouth/ and let me pour the ashes in.