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Rumi advised me to keep my spirit up in the branches of a tree.

I ought to haul out this junk I called winter and lose it somewhere.

He grabbed me, groped for my hips, kissing me, smelling my hair.

I was a darling without even trying, kerchief and dungarees.

He could smell the bear’s breath, feel the hot huff against his ear.

Maybe all of it was possible. Maybe it all could work out.

Maybe this was one thing in his life he had done right, or so he hoped.

Death will come for us so fast we will never be able to outrun it.

The girl I was could not have imagined the woman I grew up to become.

“It means,” Stoner said again, and could not finish what he had begun.

Weird that yellow’s the color of cowardice when the sun never runs.

No one is dead, but you should come back. See what’s become of us.

It was half the Spanish he knew—stop, I have a shotgun.

No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a pencil.

This is a place where young girls are butchered in old-time songs.

What was she thinking, driving alone to see a man she’d never met?

I stuff cotton in my ears, bits of bird’s nest, anything to stop all that talk.

Cassandra blared Puccini and Eminem so she would not pray.

There was a fish. And then there was the consciousness of robots.

Jo had tossed every last wedding photo, wanted no recollection.

For the first two months of class, Toby did barely any writing at all.

The first time we were alone, I knew it before he even told me.

My mother could get me to obey without ever touching me.

Put yourself in bad positions, they’ll remind us. Address your weaknesses.

She was thinking about what she would say when the time came.

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you time is a language I don’t speak.

Window widows we were once, like lonely oil spilled on sullied beaches.