A detour in Samoa, an encounter in a bar, a snowfall in Colorado

The people I love the best / jump into work headfirst / without dallying in the shallows / and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

The father looked to the refs, the zebras in their black-and-white-striped shirts, but there was no hand in the air, no signal at all that a penalty would be called.

My friend Gina and I have a pact: Should either of us die unexpectedly, the other will retrieve the shoebox of sex toys hidden in the deceased’s closet.

Ever since I first slipped it into my duffel bag those many years ago, I have guarded the pistol jealously, like a miser his coin. The more cause someone might have to take the pistol from me, the more care I have taken to conceal it.

One of the reasons we’re lonely . . . is that we’ve cut ourselves off from the nonhuman world, and have called this “progress.”