Glimpsing my reflection in a window, I think I understand your irritation when you see me coming—that ponderous expression as I fail to grasp the obvious.

Sunday morning: half dead but fully alive.

He said, my work was always important to me, which wasn’t the same as actual importance. All that work, all those years, adding up to so little.

Stopped by the Hudson River overlook where we used to take the girls on the way to New England. Headed into the snack bar set back from the cliffs. Asked the kid at the counter about the “Free beer tomorrow” sign we always joked about. “Oh, we can’t serve alcohol here,” he said. “We get all the jumpers now the bridges are closed off.” I took my coffee outside, but couldn’t bring myself to look down. You moved on long ago. I’m still falling.

I suspect the only true answer to pretty much anything is maybe.

Scientists first noted a sharp rise in animal suicides in early 2012.

His quest to reduce expression to its essence eventually reduced it to nothing.

Is the thought worth the effort it would take to express itself in words?

Dry leaves clatter across the driveway. School supplies. Football. Death.

Her family was small and she had no real friends. She supposed that if her parents had thought about it they would have considered her a disappointment. Yet somehow her heart was still bursting with the sadness and joy of living, a sensation so painful that she sought oblivion by any means available.

The poignance of the indoor cat who finally gets out on Christmas.

In his bewilderment he slept on her side of the bed, with a gun under the pillow.

The universe deposits money in our accounts every day, in the form of reality.

Marilyn Minter
Johnny Winter
Harold Pinter

Years ago you took a bullet to the brain—it just took this long to realize it. In 25 more you will hit the ground.