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Their leader is a badly wounded boy in need of wounding others.

The baby in her belly is not a sibling, will never be their playmate.

Maybe that’s what she feels, not stranded, but suspended in time.

To keep the baby safe, we sealed the house as if against bad weather.

If you play, decide three things: the rules, stakes, and quitting time.

I find lost prayers in the tiny edging around buttonholes.

When we watched jellyfish, Mary Kate wondered if they dreamed of land.

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

I returned to research a history we’d only known through stories.

The attendant instructs remember, immerse three times.

I became a symbol of freedom, a miracle who had escaped the Devil.

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

Salve, salve, Regina. As the song ends, he folds into the fabric seat.

Sometimes you weren’t a good daughter, the mother says.

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

Ink to paper, she is inventory, has a price tag. A piece to catalog.

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

I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the Other.

My wife had time to form a thought: I have killed my daughter.

Dining at Bocuse wasn’t about food, but about pleasure in all its forms.

There are parts of a man that are born again with each of his daughters.

Someday you’ll understand, darling. Everyone will just—vanish!

I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn-knife.

My hands only knew. The painkillers in our mothers’ cabinets.

I sensed that a name defined who I was and would be in the future.

In my sister’s memory, an old woman chased after the oranges.

Most days, at the pool, we are able to leave our troubles on land behind.

I usually get my best writing done at night or at the close of day.