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Take my hand, lead me by heart over the blind stepping-stones to the edge.

I give you a real blue song the mountains hold under their foot.

I’m just wired hard for hunting, and not so much at all for fishing.

They’re not, and it’s not, and we’re not, and only a god can save us.

Come live with me. We could plant acorns in each other’s mouths.

It was the season of storm delays, of . . . shame and ghosts on trains

Our spirits are as transparent as the gown my wife wears in bed.

"In County": A new six-word story by Robert Olen Butler.

“Can’t you see Hemingway’s having breakfast with his grandson?”

Another year another almanac, a washed-out castle in the sand.

Divorced. Wife living with someone else. Pregnant with his child.

Some longings appear so frequently they must be instinct.

I decide it’s as good a place as any to stop, pant & smell the roses—

The old-timer outside the guard station was knifing his own tires.

A knife left by an untraced foot marks where to lay the body—fácil.

I roll lactic bubbles under my face with rose quartz, fuck a pillow in sleep.

I realized you were my fourth love, and the system was always doomed.

This box is full of wires, energy that moves in ways I can hardly fathom.

He thought about kissing her. Then he decided that she was just lonely.

She looked over through the falling snow. “Jack?” she said. “Is that you?”

It is February in Ukraine. Juliana tells the reporter she just wants to live in her country.

We know that we were lied to, the disaster was worse than we feared.

The doctor said your life will never be the same before she said hello.

At nineteen I lived for three months as an earnest cocaine addict.

The room barely fit a bed, a chest of drawers, and a rocker, all not hers.

We say America you are magnificent and we meant we are heartbroken.

Everything white is a white spider. The spider spins regardless of color.

There’s something about traveling by plane. People tell their secrets.

I put my hand on my stomach and had an image of the melting snowman.

The irreversible ink stain breaking the face of whatever we skate on.