When I was five and Sarah seven, my mother went on a trip. She was gone from our home in Rochester, New York, for several days. But she was often gone — not always from the house but missing from our lives nonetheless. Then one day Sarah and I retu...
I peer through the spectral, polluted, nicotine-sodden windows of my sock at these old lollopers in their kiddie gear. Go home, I say. Go home, lie down, and eat lots of potatoes. I had three handjobs yesterday. None was easy. Sometimes you really ha...
We humans may be brilliant and we may be special, but we are still connected to the rest of life. No one reminds us of this better than our dogs. Perhaps the human condition will always include attempts to remind ourselves that we are separate from t...
When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was sudden...
Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So w...
I Am Primate I was once taught, that I am a soul in a body. I once believed I was separate from the earth. A stranger in a strange land, a sinner in need of a Savior. But, isn't this my home? This beautiful world? Isn't this my form? These hands, the...
I think people who don't know the woods very well sometimes imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, an endless continuation of the wall of trees they see lining the road. And I think they wonder how it could hold anyone's interest ...
Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility and sadness in us are strong,...
How long you guys been renovating?” Craig asked Arianna. “About a month.” “How much longer?” Arianna sighed. “The contractor messed up the counters, so who knows.” “Preaching to the choir.” “Yeah?” “Oh, yeah. But in the end ev...
Home is where I take up such a tiny portion of the memory foam; home is a splintered word. His pillow is a sweat-stained map of an escape plot, also a map of love’s dear abandon. (When did he give way, at which breath?) Forgiveness may mean retrosp...
It’s so the stories go that the Ginen tell. If you find a beautiful fairmaid swimming in the river, her fish tail flashing; if you follow her down into her water home with her, she will make the water like air so you can breathe. But then she’ll ...
Dean: [long silence before Dean speaks] You know, it's not just us, we got a little girl we gotta think about. [breaks into tears] Cindy: I know... I... I can't do this anymore. Dean: You're just thinking about yourself. What about Frankie? You want ...
Real Estate Salesman: Fifteen years ago, a half-dozen houses stuck here and there. There's the old cemetery, squirrels, buttercups, daisies. Dozens of the prettiest little homes you ever saw. Ninety per cent owned by suckers who used to pay rent to y...
Medic Wade: Actually, the trick to falling asleep is trying to stay awake. Mellish: How is that, Wade? Medic Wade: Well, when my mother was an intern, she used to work late through the night... sleep through the day. So the only time we'd ever get to...
Tucker: [Dale is attracted to one of the college co-eds at the gas station, but hesitates to try to go talk to her] She's just human. Why don't you go over and talk to her? Dale: Talk to her? What... What in the world would I say? Tucker: I don't kno...
Deckard: Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were going to play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran; you remember that? You ever tel...
Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out...
And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you were right to be afraid all the time and never feel secure or trust me. I knew it'd be 'See, you're leaving after all when you promised you wouldn't....
Am I making something worth while? I’m not sure. I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts, but am I making something worth while? I’m not sure. There was a boy las...
He had strong, steady hands, and I could tell from looking at them there was little he couldn't do. Mossy always said you could tell everything you needed to know about a man from his hands. Some hands, she told me, were leaving hands. They were the ...
Can we get back to work now?" Haley asked, sounding innocent, but Zoe didn't miss the woman's lips twitching or the humor sparkling in her eyes. Something told her that this woman truly enjoyed torturing her husband. "For god sake's, my little grassh...
