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Liz wore a brass wedding ring, and had no marriage certificate to show.

“I love you” is always a quotation. You did not say it first.

Don’t send me home without a round of applause if not a title.

A woman from the next table eyed him and he eyed her right back.

Nothing happened to him? Why, genius had happened to him!

All the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring.

Ice and evergreen and sun; three moments arranged for human looking.

I had pasted a pink Post-it to my phone screen that said DON’T DRINK.

I’m not afraid of dying. I’ve died on camera before. It’s not so bad.

I never entered no-man’s-land by any light brighter than the palest moon.

A man and a woman joined by newspaper pages culture to politics.

We’re phosphorus, we’re this glowing rock under UV light in the mineral shed.

A letter is like a poem, showing the marks of an unwilling composer.

Before sunrise I counted nine meteors scratching the heavens.

With my lime-green nitrile gloves I carried him around to the others.

The blackness of her hair seemed to pull the color from her body.

The tall, flashing curtains of glass keep them a breath’s thickness apart.

Oh, how fascinating it was, watching it all! It was exactly like a play.

All that existed was Louisa’s beauty—or Khin’s refashioning of it.

Dad doesn’t believe I’m beauty queen material. I believe in myself.

The success is deserved, I think: certainly it was not lightly gained.

Mistaking water hemlock for parsley, I die hours later in the hospital.

I have a maple in the yard and from time to time all is distant.

It was hard to know what memories or images had marked him.

She wags her index finger so furiously that I’m certain it will snap off.

Ms. Marmelstein led with her eyelashes, curling out like scimitars.

I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the Other.

The horse is in the air, her legs withdrawn, a diamond shape.

These days I watch the world go by and do not breathe life into it.

I believe you get to see a sunset once. Death, well, I’ve lost count.