There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence th...
When I was maybe five or six years old, a woman down the street...got flattened by a train. When I got older I realized it probably wasn't an accident. It was a late train and she was so sick and swollen with age she could barely move, so what the he...
I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same way. She hated to make small talk with other people, but get her into a conversation with herself and she was quite the raconteur. She would tell her...
I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only think I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun ...
It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late ...
Is that all, sir? Only we've got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money faster'n we can make it, which lea...
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling...
An aphrodisiac will disappear, delusional, like permanence or wealth - a shimmering, as if love were a ghost - and yet my passion for you seethes and sears without an end. Late April leaves can’t crave caress of dew, sunlight’s sweet splash, more...
She disliked him more for having mastered her inner will. How dared he say that he would love her still, even though she shook him off with contempt? She wished she had spoken more - stronger. Sharp, decisive speeches came thronging to her mind, now ...
Who trusts the Bridge Builder when you wake to snow on your blankets and winter blasting through cracked walls and dinner for four is a fifty cent box of Kraft Dinner rationed in half and your dad tells you every single day that he just doesn't know ...
How can I explain to her that I just can't come home? It's too soon, it's too late; I do want to be with Helen every second of the day but at the same time I don't want to be with her at all. I want to have back what I felt at the beginning. I could ...
Portia followed after, a smirk on her face, and Syc hissed as he passed. Donegan waited till they were gone, then swung round to Gracious. "He hissed at me." "He hissed at you." "Should I hiss back?" "It's a bit late." "He could still hear." "Not unl...
Nico strode forward. The enemy army fell back before him like he radiated death, which of course he did. Through the face guard of his skull-shaped helmet, he smiled. "Got your message. Is it too late to join the party?" "Son of Hades." Kronos spit o...
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fade...
She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately ...
Heights plummeted because of a little disaster called civilization. "Heights go way down when we go into state society," says Bogin. "When Egypt conquered the Nile area, the height of peasants fell dramatically. They moved from having access to a wid...
It's a fact— is ignorant in some way or another. Ignorance is our deepest secret. And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it. Here is...
It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so...
I lay down and started to feel a little depressed about prom. I refused to feel any kind of sadness over the fact that I wasn't going to prom, but I had - stupidly, embarrassingly - thought of finding Margo, and getting her to come home with me just ...
You," I surmised, and gestured round. "Thank you." "No," he denied. His pale hair floated out from beneath his cap in a halo as he shook his head. "But I assisted. Thank you for bathing. It makes my task of checking on you less onerous. I'm glad you'...
Maybe tell me about those letters. Confession is good for the soul." I expected her to tear into me yet again, but instead she stayed silent for several seconds, running her fingers over the trim of her blanket. "I do belive my soul is past the point...
