This is the fantasy of self-sufficiency: healthy in a closed loop, without needing anything from anyone else.

Who would have thought he’d sit / so still so long, but he settles right / into our row, props his head on the velvet / armrest basking in the company

A cupboard is just asking to be opened. A cupboard doesn’t ask a question, but is, by its very nature, an entreaty. A cupboard says it did not ask to be a cupboard, did not ask to be an entreaty, is not, in fact, a cupboard at all.

At sixteen, life is supposed to be safe. Things are supposed to be beginning. We are supposed to be weaning from the care and guidance of people who have raised us. We are supposed to be on the brink of our adult lives. We should be taking the reins and figuring out how to care for ourselves, and we should have our most basic needs met so that we can care for others. It’s a volatile, dizzying, restless age. It is not always sweet.

The art cinema was a few blocks away from the lake, he wanted to take her there. She assented. He bought her a maple creamie and he licked his black raspberry with his thick tongue. They waited on the dock as the sun began to set.

Papa blew way over the limit on the field test, but he swore it was a set-up. He kept a loaded assault rifle next to the front door, and a handgun under the seat of his truck.

Every Sunday, I practice saying no in three languages.

It happened in a matter of seconds, this overlay of violence in my mind, that took us into another life, and then it was gone. Perhaps what I wanted was to have my future thrust upon me. No, I thought, just another anxious fantasy. It was just the mind’s preparation on overdrive. It all might have happened differently. The alligator had every intention of biting her. Tori’s face flashed with anger momentarily before Frank tried to pull her away.

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