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A small circle of friends and family babysat so she could go to school.

We’re fat! So what? They hadn’t yet tired of this chant, the play’s refrain.

I am part dumb, and blind, and deaf, and untasting and unfeeling.

It wants to name the dead—without a name you wander lost in the sky.

What I became was not pretty. Like a needle on water-warped paper.

When an adult falls, children are stunned and cry, “Mommy! Mommy!”

I hightailed it out of the hospital like my ex-wife was a prison I’d escaped.

While they stand in line Robin leans into his chest. They don't talk.

It’s like his bottom half is not man but a strong horse.

A whippoorwill called, a lonely voice among the cedars.

Can there have been something in my letter, that unlucky letter?

We can be naked in black light, the smell of unwash and old pot.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she says, after a pause. “I don’t trust you.”

The girls got drunk, danced to Russian karaoke under disco-light glitz.

We’re stuck floating around on the surface of our lives like kids in a pool.

Best-selling author Melanie Gideon reads from her novel Wife 22.

The light is like a benediction. My husband reaches for my hand.

My job requires me to make things disappear like a Vegas magician.

Appearance does not really appear, but it appears to appear.

The nights she and Wade have sex she can’t do so without feeling guilty.

Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his winter dreams.

He begrudged how money poured through her hands like water.

Of course she had known. Nothing in this life escaped her design. Everywhere, people ogled the ring. Everywhere, Emeline posted pictures.

You’re going to have a difficult life if you can’t figure out where to stand.

There were so many tired, frayed words thick in the air around her.

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands.

Our eyes searched for the island, but ahead there was only overcast.

“Ki o tsukete!” she called, and he knew the words. Be careful.

The end of a relationship, through four six-word stories.

You’ve seen her almost every day, going to and from the gardens.