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All I could focus on was if he was going to ask me to date him.

The draft of ten handwritten pages would have to be cut back to five.

Turns out my body’s a dollar sweet potato, her screen said.

When the population was whiter, they fawned over the Korean.

I am the king of doing wheelies on the Stingray bicycle of my mind.

I drank every night until late and drew earth-shaking conclusions.

Today the game was to try to catch one of the cats in a pillowcase.

What I really meant to say is that I am tired. Beauty can demand so much.

The door opened, and Dan stormed in, shouting, “Motherfuckers!”

Once, when young and proud, I tried to grasp the enormity of the past.

I was only five when Dad told me I had died. “You drowned,” he said.

Albert came to her rescue. “The Great Gatsby’s our religion,” he said.

We fed our dreams inevitable sins, the kind you lie about till you grow mean.

Someone seems to have made an excellent age-specific insight.

Mama would say beware of the little flaws that make one homely.

She always came back with her lipstick smeared all over her mouth.

We need to stop talking about it, we need to put some pants on.

He squinted and looked off a little beyond where we were.

It was spring: the field, a botanist’s mirage of wild flowers.

Louise watched from the shadow. She was looking for somewhere to land.

The war was about to begin, and the four boys were
in charge.

When the doctors’ voices started turning to noise, I didn’t fight it.

This is a novel that contains more than its actuarial share of falls.

The window washer smiles a little and licks his lips. Nadine smiles back.

Her mother singing out the window at trucks slamming the other way.

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

At the core, a daughter is a self-reckoning emptiness.

Not the Olympics, the guard said. Just chuck yourself down the tube.

There were classes where you became a family. It was a kind of love affair.