I grew up expecting them, dreading them, that appointed hour in biology class when the dead—or worse—the still-alive-and-only-just-anesthetized frogs would be presented to us for dissection. I pictured the…

  Your father’s tufted rocking chair ruled the living room corner in his absence, gathering dust motes and Marlboro ash. If you insisted, it would rock with a groan that…

  I’m trying to date you. You’re late. Or I’m late. Our timing is already off. We met online. OkCupid or Plenty of Fish. My pictures are a decade old.…

  If men had wings, we would hear nothing but their beating. Some would learn how to tune out the takeoffs, while others would start their day by donning a…

  i. Moss creeps up the massive white oak, gentling its craggy bark. This centenarian protects our farmhouse from summer’s glare. A black snake once lived beneath its gnarliest root,…

  Lush, 144 Newbury St., Boston, MA When I heard the bombs go off, I was standing in this shop with a tiny box of their “solid toothpaste” in my…

  When we drive through Salt River Canyon on US 60, the highway connecting the Tucson desert to the pine-forested mountains of our childhoods, I ask my husband to pull…

  Much later, when I was twenty-eight years old, I met up with our childhood friends at a bar in our Connecticut hometown the night before your funeral and they…

  oil on canvas   Mira que si te quise, fué por el pelo, Ahora que estás pelona, ya no te quiero. Look, if I loved you, it was for…

  mixed media on canvas   [i didn’t know he had a sister is the wrong thought. nonetheless it comes to me. so does the husband, ferried by the double…

  The bus is a bull—pausing, lurching, exploding, charging, bucking, buckling. Ride the bus. Ride the bull. Ride the wave. Every seat is taken, even the ones that face each…

  Shortly after college, I bought The Visible Woman for fifteen dollars from a little yellow antique store in my hometown. I’ve carried her with me for years. The name…