He and I are still and somber at the kitchen table. We’re both wearing black and stare at each other through blood-shot eyes. The children’s thumps echo on the ceiling above. I think about the other family’s children.

We all got married — Suzanne, and Virginia, and I — and it was all we ever wanted to be at the time.

If you outlive me, she said, it won't be because I smoke but because of what you put me through when you quit.

‘I love you' said the man at the book signing. He was one of the last. The shop was closing. The staff were starting to turn off the lights. She was sitting in the glow of a table lamp with her latest novel in stacks around her.

I don't ask for much. No, don't grunt at me, it's true. Give me a smooth boulder and a stone I can hold in my hand for grinding, maybe a sharp bit of flint for scraping. A new stick I can dig with, my old one's really worn. Shrgk's mate just got her a new stick and he even…

It was a year of red, white, and blue bell bottoms, chokers, and mini-skirts. It was not a decade of pink stretch pants, pink sweatshirts, and pink snowsuits.

We sat under the broken umbrella, its flowered fabric hanging limp on one side. The rain fell softly at the edges of our backs. I kissed his hand, the one without fingers (not a casualty of his job, only of birth). My lips pressed what I couldn't say into his…

...what will happen to me buying drugs on the street, at night...?

A pet scorpion. A pet scorpion named Chris.(1)

We are not alone, not as alone as we think.

He wanted to walk in, take off his scrubs, and not have to look at pictures of peaches.

Tongs, uvulas, money. Love. But really, silence.

A landscape has the tendency to take on new dimensions when night comes.

Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"

Every one of them will tell you I drank so much malt liquor I could barf up a distillery and that wouldn’t be a lie.