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He said, You have no brother. I didn’t know what he meant. I do now.

In the rooms you picked up what you liked, like shells on a beach.

It swims for a while, but abandons itself, slips from its own grasp.

The pain lithified to numbness, and she recalled the time of his courtship.

The people with pebbles go home to frolic under the detritus of the day.

My friend Angela, who is also my roommate, got me into stripping.

The past, you hear it, the small hours, sucked down the undertow.

What’s a man supposed to do when his best friend is a falcon?

Never issue a dare to a dead person. They’ve got all the time in the world.

I have studied and become intimate with the speed of darkness.

Outside of Ikea’s window the nighttime wind tilts like a folk song.

She often feels something kinetic between herself and younger men.

There would be no one to live for; she would live for herself.

I hold out hands, empty and poor like a beggar by the temple door.

If you let me live, I will buy you beer whenever I see you in town.

Little footage, this plot, where it thrived at first, then ghosted away.

To deny love can’t undo the feeling of it.

When the snake attacked the soldier, its fangs left a violent opening.

No one’s alone. Men kill for this, or for as much. And what of the dead?

Those under us are not dead. They are dancers. We are the music.

The three of us share a myth, that I’m fragile as old bones. My parents speak in low voices—about me, I’m pretty sure. I watch the waitress, trying to remember how to flirt. I take off my mask.

He pushed aside a photograph of a man with a knife stuck in his eye.

He cut down on beer and moved into the hotel that had my name.

“Hey, you look lost,” the hunter had said. “You better come with me.”

The boys searched for their father, lost somewhere in the Olympic Range.

Some people see the man but not the light, the field but not the varnish.

She wonders if he will be all right. She assumes he has four-wheel drive.

West Oakland was characterized by unemployment, poverty, and blight.

Spanish men. They whispered and whistled. It made her jumpy.

Owen’s head throbbed, his ears ached, and an anvil sat on his chest.