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Edward the Funny didn’t have much to laugh about in his midthirties.

I’m on the verge of a breakdown. So I might as well have another child.

“You see,” Sister Elba said, smiling, “you should never doubt him.”

The thing that illuminated him might have been guilt or outright lust.

She stared back at me, a toddler almost hidden in the folds of her skirt.

The rich man adorns himself and the elegant man gets dressed.

Just some wine, Ellie told herself. Just to prove she wasn’t chicken.

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

He was regarded as a visionary and a fool in almost equal measure.

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

I pictured myself as a chart inside her head. Two sides: good and bad.

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

The illusion is so complete that it seems the world has been re-created.

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

Premonitions return to me like a carrier pigeon, disaster strapped to its leg.

To be married is to learn to love, captive in your own new country.

Everything comes down to the lightning. Nothing is ever by chance.

Overnight, somebody had dumped a dead pit bull in the trash bin.

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

She leaned back to accommodate the sweet delirium of his hands.

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

Sue Mell

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

I put my arm around Larry’s shoulders and ask him to pull over.

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

Clayton always imagined getting laid in the rooms of his dad’s motel.

The light, returning, nudged me from sleep, and walked me to dinner.

My husband shovels snow from flower beds back onto the drive.