He rolled over to turn off the alarm and hit a pile of chilly magazines, Playboys, arranged on her side of the bed in the shape of a sleeping body, July's centerfold unfolded on her pillow.

He drank his coffee in the silent morning, an additional pile of back issues at the place where she normally sat.

In the bathroom he discovered the newest one, recently arrived in the mail, with a note tucked beside a red-head with a tattoo on her ankle, "Happy dump!  This month's visual…

I dreamed that I ran over his little tree.

I was driving a big rig and the trailer just came up alongside the cab and there was nothing I could do to prevent the wreck, just hold on helpless during the slide...right over his little pointy tree.

No one was hurt, but in the ensuing chaos someone else mentioned, laughing, the crushed tree...showed how little I care.

He doesn't know that I have new cats gracing my windowsill or that today I finally fixed what was wrong with…

She swallowed her gun.

I repeat the phrase over and over as I drive down the interstate, and indeed it is a bad day, the kind that when I say, "I don't feel good," those closest to me know what I mean.

Swallowing my gun sounds like an option, only, like I said, I am driving down the interstate and there are a lot of trucks and pot holes so I don't have enough hands to reach into the door pocket for mine, much less hold it awkwardly while I swallow.

Hands at 10…

A cold rain fell on the lilacs beside the old homestead cabin where he still lived despite having been away to college, having been away to try his hand at living elsewhere, having been away in his heart never.

He no longer farmed full-scale, had let the fields return to pasture where cattle grazed, but he had put in a garden that fed most of the small community, and he sold goat cheese and eggs, too, let the schoolchildren pick pumpkins in season, made intricate furniture out of wood…

The evening  started off warm, a predictable and comfortable group of friends surprisingly spiced by new faces, six degrees of separation heating the whole night to a slow simmer and finally a full rolling boil until we cooled back off around midnight on the dark slick streets of gay goodbyes.

A puddle of butter and wine sauce in an empty mussel shell, a laughing sip of someone's crazy drink, a waitress who made exactly the right joke, a private conversation with heads bent together…

He knows that she is FUN; you know how she smells.

He knows that he is attracted to her; you know what she says in her sleep.

He knows what she orders in a restaurant; you know that she likes ranch dressing on her fried potatoes.

He knows how she talks about things she is passionate about; you know what passages she reads aloud at breakfast.

He wants to be in love with her; you want to build a life with her.

He likes the pain of what could have been; you…

He was all for dancing naked around the voodoo fire and tasting the forbidden wine, even getting drunk on it while he jerked in submission to the queen of all-that-is-sensual's hand; he was all for skipping along to a whale of a beat and seducing the princess with his eyes.

All for it, until his safe nest of comfort was threatened, until he feared the loss of his plate of everyday food.

He was that wild child climbing on the back of the couch until Mommy said, "Or else," and…

I tried to give my husband away, once, to a woman who gave off a real "wild child" vibe, who seemed to be exactly what he was always trying to get me to be.

I would watch while they bummed cigarettes from each other, drank long-necks together, leaned toward each other with that "I want you" body language while she put her hand on his arm. 

She'd look in her tiny mirror and smear on lip gloss and he'd tease her, promise to come by her house for various honey-dos since she was a…

The river bed is silent and dry.

The lovemaking is rote and aimed for release.

The pages of the book are blank, or might as well be.

The scissors are dull and the night is long and the fire is utilitarian and the names are Smith and Jones and the food is bland without spice.

The day is just hours and the clock is a black and white carousel of duty.

Is it any wonder that I am going to go intentionally insane?

She liked looking at him up close, liked how his fingernails were shaped, liked how he was always losing his glasses, how his handwriting stayed in the middle of the page, how he seemed to be an island.

She liked how casual  he was, how he talked about important things as if they were on everyone's mind, and how he wasn't afraid to walk out on the forbidden just as easily as he tread the mundane.

She liked being perfectly still as a foil for his restless movements, knowing…

Taylor was prepared for demons, but not ghosts.

Way back when, on the advice of his boss, Taylor's father bought stock in Coca-cola and then a little fried chicken start-up that turned out to be named Church's, which is why he bought the country house.

Taylor knew to expect demons when he left campus and drove out, meaning to hide away for while, because after all his mother had been the one who had first decorated it, and then his dad's second wife had re-decorated it and he'd…

He doesn't have permission from anyone, not his wife, not her, not even from his own heart.

In fact, the first in that list, and possibly the last, has forbidden that he contact her, and in a fit of screaming after his last betrayal, his wife deleted the number, pressing on the button so long that his phone screamed in tandem with her.

But there is a thin strip of paper, buried deep in the pocket of an old coat, with faint digits written in pencil, and he knows it is there…

Punch Lewis started coming to Shiney the night after the ranch Christmas party, as if too many people in his library had awakened him, made him restless, and Shiney wondered the next morning, over coffee, why he had waited thirty years.

On the nights he came, they always sat in the big red leather chairs, sipped scotch, and talked about the ranch, the modern-day ranch, the current employees, the here and now, not the one he left her with way back when.

By the…

I start out each day living gingerly, on the edges of the day, sleeping until the sun is bright hot, moving very carefully into bathroom and kitchen, hoping the coffee or sips of water will stay down.

The rattle of the ibuprophen from the bottle into my hand is familiar, but I bid the pills to both be quiet and be quickly absorbed without that roiling ache in the stomach that signifies having to rattle again.

It is past noon before I walk firmly upright, tear my…