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Every life is an imperfect continuation of another.

Here I am, king of the gods, making a fool of myself just to get under your gown.

She had boyfriends before she met him. Well, not really boyfriends.

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.

She holds her smile like a note sustained at the end of a phrase.

My head was muffled in velvet, my body exposed in an old slip.

I played a game I called ocean, resisted my need for air.

No one asked that, changed as he was, he do more than survive.

Ivan rolled his eyes, and looked at the sky like someone about to be martyred.

The world is where we brace for a joke that’s about to be played on us.

Stripped we are — no mark of wealth or rank upon us. We wear our skins.

Nothing was permanent, no friend I made, no math test I took.

When he asks me if I’m ready, I don’t even know what he means.

I have wasted your childhood, photographed you too much.

Brassy bullets fell against the floral comforter like little candies.

Maybe older Natives have more trauma than younger ones.

The new generation doesn’t play war, which is a shame; they text.

By the end of my trip to St. Thomas, I had discovered a reason to live.

When I was born I saw death devour the birth of something.

When we move together in the dark I can almost get to him but I turn back.

Her body too, a mystery in motion. But does she own her body?

I measured your breath with my breath, your foot with my thumb.

Peter Taylor’s stories are jigsaw puzzles of nuance and suggestion.

The road is covered with lake water that reaches Gloria’s calves.

It seemed that someone had died, but really it was part of us.

A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t think I could ever write about it.

I love you to distraction, she would say. I love you beyond love.

This is the worst moment of her life, maybe of anybody’s life, ever.

The only person I’d seen naked was my mother the night she died.