Fiction

I hear Tchaikovsky when I close my eyes and pretend I’m flying.

I wander among my recollections of the world of letters in London.

When one of the Baxters yelled, “Hey, Turd,” we all turned our heads.

Annette. Such a little bit of a person. Emma couldn’t get over it.

What does it take for a woman like you to decide to do something?

It was as if the stranger in the train carriage had taken out a knife.

“I’ve already submitted the course grades,” Costa said warily.

The boys came down out of the woods and crossed toward the dock.

Maybe older Natives have more trauma than younger ones.

Tomorrow I’ll be ratted out about the hunting, but I knew it’d be worth it.

“Look in my eyes. Do I look like someone who has heard this story?”

The wild-eyed horse was more a figure of nightmare than dream.

Throwing the El Camino into drive, he roared down the mountain road.

1908. The puppet’s name is Sambo. Oh what a friendly boy he looks to be!

“She’s just a girl,” Sarah’s mother said. “A very, very young girl.”

The alert says Warning: Wild Exotic Animals Loose.

By the end of my trip to St. Thomas, I had discovered a reason to live.

When we move together in the dark I can almost get to him but I turn back.

Had he been a man, we could’ve saved his life right then and there.

Her body too, a mystery in motion. But does she own her body?

She alone knew how he could be swept up, tender interior laid bare.

Six-word stories about the the perplexities of love and desire.

The road is covered with lake water that reaches Gloria’s calves.

If he was cheating on her, he was cheating on her paintings as well.

It never occurred to me that I was being sold too, standing inside my box. Basil was annoyed. All that training he’d given me going to waste on art? I’ve been selling cigarettes, I said, as if it were a credential.

You put his hand around your throat but he keeps moving it away.

I saw myself, and for the first time, I didn’t look away.

It seemed that someone had died, but really it was part of us.

It was to keep us impartial and to protect us from threats and bribes.

Sarah let herself be guided by her desire, inescapable and true.