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I was free. The first step had been taken, and it was irrevocable.

It was an act that made me feel safer but also somehow more imperiled.

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

He picked up the knife I had there, and said he’d kill me if ever I told.

Daofu was a cluster of lights bubbling up in the belly of a darkened plain.

The neighbors were Ukrainians with bad tempers and owned guns.

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

Don’t start conversations or attract attention. Don’t be suspicious.

I didn’t know that by falling for you, I was falling for your demons too.

He says the word robbery and you don’t know if he’s asking or telling.

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

“Is that your banana?” the short cop asked her.

These men don’t ask me to remove my scarf, even though it’s mid-July.

You’re safe here. A prison might be the safest place to meet a man.

Remind the children never to use the state as a metric for ethics.

You decide that in this city all things are possible, even happiness.

Mark was spending his life with one of the world’s weaklings.

She confessed to Judd that she saw other men. She liked a good time.

The everlasting shines through in the threshold between worlds.

You’re feminist? Neither one of you. You just like getting into fights.

“Your mother’s fine,” Giuseppe said. “We’re all completely fine.”

Stable-keeper’s kids know broken then healed, but healed with limits.

Third Place

All that existed was Louisa’s beauty—or Khin’s refashioning of it.

Most people come to Africa because they are drawn to its misery.

Late March 2002. “Mud time”—so called in Mad River Junction, Ohio.

through the trees, breathless, the grouse leads us steady as a rope.

She was so happy they were going to save her from the city of Dallas.

A finger on the bell, a quick sprint on light feet, and then stifled laughter.

Dad was blind until six months ago, when he bumped his head in the fire.