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Salt provokes, tenderizes. Your wounds, your dinner.

I tell my sister what I didn’t tell my father, I love you. Please, don’t die.

“Oh, Jesus.” It’s the greatest shame since 1929’s stock market.

I know which home takes the turning, which mind washes in hot water.

I bow to the life being lived in this finch on my terrace this morning.

Writing to you is like putting a note in a bottle, hoping it will reach Japan.

Yes, Eylon thought, he lied to Cath. Lied about his day, about the risks.

I love scientists. They’re trying their hardest. And they just want love.

I am visited daily by unrelenting spirits evoking my accumulated flaws.

“I don’t care how tired we are. I’m not not having sex on my wedding night.”

His beauty comes from his power. I am as wary as I am drawn to it.

Definitely believe what you hear about the problems with painkillers.

Buster’s reasons for looking after Marco weren’t entirely altruistic.

The first rule of the house is that everything must be even stevens.

Let him search, Tricia thought, who knew what he might discover.

The writer was there ahead of the world. And that was a great moment . . .

My closet was a repository of foibles and fetishes, an archive of my life history.

She wears her nakedness like it has been woven from air.

You were drowning in the bathtub. Mother was in her room.

The night shower is a personal pan-blizzard, a folklore-free zone.

God was surrounding the chair, leaves flourishing from a sickly tree.

My “lonelymaking.” Also known as my horrible secret, continent-wide.

I slept but never dreamed there. Nor did I feel the need to court a god.

I try to believe that even when cords are cut or people die we connect.

My first true love was Underwood, my mother’s typewriter.

The world seemed newly made and filled with a frightening silence.

It has come to this—my daughter is now assaulting other children.

Craig Bueltel

The portal light, on your face, now, a rose light on a sinking freighter.