I couldn't help but think, as I watched him, of the barrels of toxic fluids that had accrued behind Hal's bike shop where the scrub lining the railroad tracks had offered local companies enough cover to dump a stray contaner or two. Everything had been sealed up, but things were beginning to leak out. I had come to both pity and respect Len in the years since my mother left. He followed the physical to try to understand things that were impossible to comphrehend. In that, I could see, he was like me.

Part of the creative process for me is an invitation for readers to follow their imagination.

I had always been in love with him. I counted the lashes of each closed eye. He had been my almost, my might have been, and I did not want to leave him

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

I stared at her black hair. It was shiny like the promises in magazines.

He had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were the two worst things to be.

She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.