The billion flinches that rebuilt your face.

Normally he anticipated this cold black season with dread, but this year it suited him. It was what he deserved. He was locked in for the siege.

Their love still superseded their obvious mutual loathing.

His grand opus, a masterpiece of omission.

Our neighbor ran a small extermination business from a remodeled garage behind his house. Some weekends we’d sneak in, fascinated by a wall display of such mounted horrors as a freakish two-headed moth with a 12-inch wingspan. Later I discovered that every exterminator had one of these as part of their standard franchise package, fabricated by XYZ Pest Museum in Silver City, NM.

The cat who joins you at the back window to watch squirrels on the lawn; the dog who briefly rests his head on your lap on the bench in front of the food co-op; the toddler one table over, offering her bottle to you—all touchingly unaware of what a shit you are.

Realizing gradually, then all of a sudden, all of the stuff that’s never going to happen.

Sooner or later, one way or another, the workplace will steal your dignity.

Drawing: a record of its own making.

They didn’t know it yet, but they’d worn out their welcome before they arrived.

Months of fear and isolation had worn him into component parts.