On the unexpected vast mount, a single path goes in all directions. The hiker is lost, and signs are gone, but from a hole close by come tiny steps, drawing the eye to a small and shy white fur.

High school biology, skinning a frog: fascinated in spite of myself at the inside-out glove of the peeled epidermis, the sleekness of overlapped muscles, the three black liver lobes hiding the nut of a wrinkled gallbladder. At the way

You must know I am the charred debris that crumbles to the shore a negative image of the burning, left unburnt trying to breathe through a leaf disintegrating on your tongue. That is what I am a desiccant ashen

The wind whistles through the trees like a piccolo, and for a brief moment, the music is sweet. But then it disappears. Where did it go? In the darkening sky, the storm descends. A fierceness grows. Clouds rush by

While walking to the park at dusk I saw a quail crushed into the road, nothing more than tarred bones and the asphalt’s open red mouth. White down dusted the pavement: soft summer snow. Then ahead, one of two

I have spent my life preparing for life like setting a table for guests I haven’t invited starched linen napkins, glowing candles Boeuf Bourguignon simmering on the stove like trying to lose ten pounds, sweating on a Peloton going