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When he kisses me, my heart flutters in my chest like swarming bees.

What humanity needed was that gravity-defying miracle, the bird.

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

After nearly a year of dating, I never stopped thinking of that other boy.

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

This would not be a wooing meal. I was cooking my man into submission.

She often feels something kinetic between herself and younger men.

“As your brother, I ask you, how did you get that scar on your face?”

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

He was warm that way, always tender, and maybe that’s the worst part.

He glowered even as a little child. Maybe because he has your bad eyes.

Between me and the sky is a screen door and a whole mess of wind.

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

I try to imagine him wanting only a Toblerone bar for his birthday.

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

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

We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts. This we know.

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

You never see Westerners, so you don’t think of them as human beings.

He didn’t mind, he insisted, that he loved her more than she loved him.

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

She asked, “What’s the weirdest thing you can do with your body?”

She began to see the word, or traces of it, wherever she went.

He came into town with his big red pen and began revising us.

What’s the harm? Will you fight even the healing powers of love?

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

The time a man kissed my hand when we met. Though he’s been dead for decades now, I still feel the kiss.

You retell the story and I wait for my cues, when to smile, nod.

Love speaks in silence, on behalf of lovers too tired for words.