Is it because she isn’t the first? 

He opened his eyes and gazed at us, assuring himself that we were listening, though none of us had missed a word.

He looks away from me like a shy boy. I put my hand to his forehead. It is cold. He weeps and cries without making any sound. I want to cry too. I want to shout.

I kept having these dreams about you whose remains were everywhere

(Step into these shoes and you’ll be a different woman, the salesgirl had told me)

It occurred to Greg, as it often did in these situations, that he couldn’t really remember what he was supposed to be angry with his wife about.

“Colleen,” the man said. “There’s more I’d like to ask you.”

We met in France. We were both tango dancers—

There was a popular theory that they were gods, or angels delivered to watch over us in our final days.

And so it was observed, Kircher writes, that the further one traveled from the capitol, the less trustworthy became the length of things…

The endmost day was at last upon them all.

“She will play. She needs to play.”

Sometimes I thought I was rotting from the inside out.

“Stay with us and bleed and live,” they tell me.

“Touch your hand. Describe how it feels.”

I stood in Fred Bone’s workroom. On the walls, all around, were photos of exposed body parts.

They are camping and isn’t it wonderful.

Five spinning wheels have spun well for an old man and his five sons in County Armagh.

Sometimes he wonders why he stays with her.

Chicken noodle soup in a lidless box…