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I died when I gave her the rose, hadn't ever felt so gravely dead. Warren—the brother— resented me, tore the rose (or so she said). The house of the dead is a mile long with candles: the moon is out but they don't talk about the moon. The marble I named doug has been dead…

Locked in bathrooms for hours, daydreaming in kitchens as they leaned their elbows into the shells of lemons, they were humming, they were humming Hully Gully. Summer lasted a long time; porch geraniums rocked the grandmothers to sleep as night slugged in, moon riding the sky like a drop of oil on water. Then down…

The middle of something is hardest to hold—this not knowing. Under the snow and rain, the forsythia is fat with bloom. A sign? After the officer reported those unidentified remains weren’t yours, I had to say something; I had to sit down and write a letter you wouldn’t read. I told you it took six…

station in Dover Delaware, mint green house, facing it, the white shade bending in the little final sunlight left. Light within above clock, people, even a head or two. Or here and there, out of time.

The town was nameless because it could      have been any town one was new to, alone in, and he walked its main street with a hesitant sense      of possibility, a sizing up, all the shops in a row, this open door or that. He stopped      to look in a window, and, seeing no one but…

There are those I attempt to describe. The words always fail. One man has a face of winter and only summer words find me. Or worse: the words of spring which trample the winter face. It is not as romantic as a curse. I find my first two names in a cemetery. Every moment life…

Last night some acorns fell and woke me as they struck the roof. Each acorn rolled, a die cast down the shakes, to tell my chances in the sun and in the snow to come. What might have been a grief, I didn't go to look for in the night. I closed my eyes to…