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There was no sense in brushing off or any other civilized thing.

History howls for direction so I remind him how the hero was lost.

For my vacation last summer, I visited the Bateer family in Xiwuqi.

Tongue, eye, nose—which has the shortest route to the brain, heart?

We are in his car. “Bell, I’m starving. Want to go for a burger or pizza?” I panic. Pizza. 285 calories per slice. Burgers. Harder to estimate.

I want to remember us this way—sun streaming through the window.

Is she dreaming of the rivers soft with codling in her hometown?

I grabbed him by the face and told him life only comes to a person once.

I needed a paycheck a lot more than I needed to be kissed.

…when you walk to the edge of the Mekong and make a wish…

This is the day when the saints all go silently to church in France.

When you are sixteen and sixty-five pounds, you are all shadows.

Underestimate the beauty in the world and spill coffee down your shirt.

“Even though we aren’t carrying out the deed, we are the most responsible.”

she was sixteen, and swimming. she was seventy-one, and soft.

Why kill something so mild-mannered, entertaining, and sociable?

This must be what it’s like to be seen by God as we inch toward the infinite.

Your image is on my credit card, you and the old red, white, and blue.

My advice is to take advice with a grain of salt.

We pried the last of the pallid squid from their crevices and ate them.

She transfigured into a swallow in flight, or a hippo in the rainy season.

We loaded the packs and started down, into the bluing of dusk.

I’m the one with the most crumbs, little bits of salad or fudge.

When we’re all together like this it feels like hope is a possibility.

On her wedding day Ellen accidently locked herself inside the pantry.

I fell asleep wondering to whom the tree might have been writing.

No one tells you what it sounds like out in the streets when bullets clang.

Papa’s link to that pond was a matter of blood. And the delicious carp.