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Pulling the bird from his throat, how it’ll smell of bloodied oat.

No, you may not walk there. No, you may not stand on that. He is not here.

I thought that proved he blamed me. I thought they all did.

What better place to write the great American novel than North Africa?

I ask that now I be allowed to see the one my vision has been denied.

There was a time when all I wanted was go back. Ask all the questions.

The fires in the hills signify nothing more than their own wonder.

When I saw my father for the last time, we both did the same thing.

It was comforting to see her suffer the way we suffer, hollowed out.

I was once very brave. Once I was very brave. I was very brave once.

spring came all the same. announced itself like a woodpecker.

Three lives I flicked alight with a few match scrapes. I cupped them.

It was a Tuesday, so they made love. She thought it was a fair compromise.

Sometimes the phone would ring and ring, and I’d go answer. It was him.

I didn't yet understand how loving something means to lose it.

What my father and I destroyed, I take back—kneeling, among the shells.

A dwarf is now crying, he sounds swollen but golden with malediction.

No one answered. I turned to his parents. My stomach felt on fire.

For the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air.

There is a baby in the square, plumped down on Papa’s thigh.

It comes as no surprise that everything is flying toward one point.

It’s a mistake to be here, he thinks, but he doesn’t turn around.

Sue Williams tells a pitch-perfect story outloud, about devotion.

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

When I meet his gaze, he’s frowning, a hint of anger flashing in his eyes. When saw the fury in his eyes, I thought he was going to kill him.

We were hurtling close to a hundred miles an hour through the dark.

“Look down,” I said, comb in hand. “Let me check behind your ears.”

I was getting a little fogged, but I recognized irony when I heard it.

All we knew from my father was that my sister had to be cut from her car.