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Turned out Bauer was one of the ones brought alive by misery.

What was she thinking, driving alone to see a man she’d never met?

My body. Stop the air. Travel by stopping, full stop, just there.

Years after the Sisters of the Holy Names left you unlock the door.

The first time we were alone, I knew it before he even told me.

We cling to an exact number of planets, to the Earth Our Mother.

She was thinking about what she would say when the time came.

Pulling the bird from his throat, how it’ll smell of bloodied oat.

No, you may not walk there. No, you may not stand on that. He is not here.

I thought that proved he blamed me. I thought they all did.

What better place to write the great American novel than North Africa?

I ask that now I be allowed to see the one my vision has been denied.

There was a time when all I wanted was go back. Ask all the questions.

The fires in the hills signify nothing more than their own wonder.

When I saw my father for the last time, we both did the same thing.

It was comforting to see her suffer the way we suffer, hollowed out.

I was once very brave. Once I was very brave. I was very brave once.

Three lives I flicked alight with a few match scrapes. I cupped them.

It was a Tuesday, so they made love. She thought it was a fair compromise.

Sometimes the phone would ring and ring, and I’d go answer. It was him.

What my father and I destroyed, I take back—kneeling, among the shells.

A dwarf is now crying, he sounds swollen but golden with malediction.

No one answered. I turned to his parents. My stomach felt on fire.

For the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air.

It comes as no surprise that everything is flying toward one point.

It’s a mistake to be here, he thinks, but he doesn’t turn around.

Sue Williams tells a pitch-perfect story outloud, about devotion.

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”