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Lynette had stepped on something sharp. There was blood.

She’s young and lovely in a mad, disheveled way, and hard to resist.

They say it is the soul that rises, not the body. But the body does rise—

She was laughing. Something animal in me was sparked, and I chased her.

One who has suffered enough, you can love yourself to death.

I can remove my hand the second it becomes too much for me.

O Fatima if only you would lean my way my heart would quiver.

I screamed every word and waited for the stones to answer back.

I have to wait till day to tell you that you’ve sunk down below sea level.

Her songs, her records—I entered them. I jumped in and out of myself.

He took off his clothes and left them on the living room floor.

Once she said, “Dying is nothing, but . . . the separation!”

The signal’s too remote and there’s a delay before we can start again.

The blade was buried to the hilt in the outside corner of his left eye.

She heard the lowing of cattle, shouting, the crack of whips.

Here we were, seventeen, trapped by the sheer number of bodies.

Here is my father on the last day of his exceptionally long life.

I pictured myself as a chart inside her head. Two sides: good and bad.

Her voice smelled like an orange, though I’d never peeled an orange.

“People think Sean is a screwup. I want them to know him as I do.”

My brother, only his son by the way he fixes his tie, blind-fingered.

“Your mom is awake,” I said. “You need to go in and see her.”

My husband once said he wanted to die eaten by a panther.

Overnight, somebody had dumped a dead pit bull in the trash bin.

There is the ghost of a child in me. It longs to die, so afraid of living.

You can dive still see half the Spanish castle, its stone pile a trap

Janet Burroway

“Tell me that everything will be okay,” I whispered to the photo.

A nearly perfect guitar fell from the sky and landed in my mom’s azaleas.

My husband collects bruises, counts how many rise above the skin.