The last time I walked up Cow Horn Hollow, it was such a hot day in August that even under the thick, towering trees the atmosphere seemed to rise and settle again as disturbed as the air in front of a fire, and the jar-flies were whirring so loud they sounded like a power line.

It was, inevitably, his mother who told him. Even in his generation of late-marriers, of self-made orphans affiliated with nothing but each other, forgetters of birthday cards and Confirmation

On an inside day in November, a smoke and cider day, Burton Glass found a white greasy kiss stamped against the black post of the sunporch he was painting at the shore, off-season in Rehobeth.

It pleased him. Look at that, he said.

Like so much brain damage, the first symptoms that mine produced were almost indistinguishable from normal behavior.

The rue Lapin slinks like a pickpocket behind the back of the Théâtre Larache, joining the boulevard Denfert-Rocherau at the rue Saint-Anne. It is a narrow street, without distinction or interest

We lived frugally. If somebody was coming to the house, my mother moved the plastic gallon jugs of milk to the front of the refrigerator and filled the other shelves with vegetables from the crisper. The only meal my mother did not cook herself was our Saturday lunch. 

When our martinis arrived we ate the olives first, plucking them from their toothpicks with our lips pulled back from our teeth, like horses.

Three times a year, the National Public Radio show Weekends on All Things Considered holds a fiction contest in which listeners from across the country submit stories that can be read aloud in less than three minutes. 

Almost every morning lately the beginning of light, rainy day or fair, would fall upon the eyelids flatly, tiredly, and the arms and legs like blocks of stone and the ache deep in the bones for the secret of comfort buried inside the unsolicitous mattress

I’m tired, I have student debt like we all do, I keep getting promoted because people keep on quitting and so now I’m middle management.