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Once she said, “Dying is nothing, but . . . the separation!”

The signal’s too remote and there’s a delay before we can start again.

She heard the lowing of cattle, shouting, the crack of whips.

Here is my father on the last day of his exceptionally long life.

“Listen,” Mike said. “You’ve had a hard day. How about I drive you home?”

I will never know what my mother guessed or didn’t suspect.

“People think Sean is a screwup. I want them to know him as I do.”

People didn’t end marriages without warning, without second chances.

She weighed the cold shiny gun on her palm and let out a jagged breath.

I was a skinhead in look and seem, a balding guy trying out the future.

You can dive still see half the Spanish castle, its stone pile a trap

Janet Burroway

I dream we ride together in a Subaru to the county fair.

“Tell me that everything will be okay,” I whispered to the photo.

I don’t know who he wants to be, and it’s not because I haven’t asked.

No one could prove it, but we were sure the neighbor shot the horse.

Who will call out as I descend, the world blurring by in sleep and despair?

By Wednesday morning I’d fallen in love with someone else.

The person was seeing his printed face superimposed over his real one.

A nearly perfect guitar fell from the sky and landed in my mom’s azaleas.

My husband collects bruises, counts how many rise above the skin.

He wondered how others lived with their sins. Maybe they never did.

Having his ex-wife in the house was a distraction. He forgot to grieve.

The celebration stops, like a sparrow hitting a sliding-glass door.

If someone looked into his eyes they would see how ugly his mind was.

I know about sex. It’s not a cardinal flying into the wrong window.

Because I am lonely, I am always shying away from the mirror.

He hit all of us sometimes, but he hit me hardest and the most.

The moths were the things that invaded, like a bad man’s touch.

At night the wildfire swelled the blurred interior like a lung of light.