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The canary-yellow sweater she knit while pregnant with me thawed first.

Yang Wan-li said, There’s enough to eat. Who needs a lot of money?

You’ve trained me well in the art of intimate distance. It’s not been easy.

The world is a riddle of shape and texture, from sight to smell to sound.

The problem, as it turned out, is: Forever can be surprisingly short.

Lee has taken on several of the great novelists of the past century.

I pictured you at Bagram Airfield in a metal coffin, quiet and still.

Jack picked me up in a car with a greasy-potato sex smell.

He was caught. Of course he was caught. He was always caught.

It dawned on me my passion was not for her but for the making-up.

What is greater: the distance between these bodies, or their need?

I saw the man for the first time in Budapest on the Széchenyi Bridge.

After seventeen years we’re parting ways. Breakups hurt, even this one.

We work to house the water yet know we cannot keep anything.

She pictures her suitcase covered in blood, wishing for anything to happen.

It was more fun to get drunk with a friend than with a lover.

He doesn’t have to lie about oatmeal. That’s the way things are for him.

You are the only one who knows not to pour water on the flame.

Ask your mother about babies. Ask her about the baby that died.

Lily hated Ray’s cancer. She couldn’t see it or cure it.

You walk into your gramma’s kitchen only once for the last time.

Let the squeamish suffer their fear, let them live without really living.

It had always been this way. Mothering, for my mother, was a cameo role.

It’s a small deposit, but I’m putting my faith in reincarnation.

I lost my pen, I lost my keys, and my hat somewhere on a table.

“The other kids. They’re making ice cream. I’ll show you, come on.”

Oh, how did people do it? How did they find some way to be happy?

Our spirits are as transparent as the gown my wife wears in bed.

Those moments are all I want. I want a life of this. He sighs and I sigh.