“but then she did. she died. no more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river.”

“Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.”

“Now that she realized she had been waiting for him — she did not like that.”

“Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.”

“She floats upon the river of his thoughts.”

“I wrote it about a friend of mine who married his high school sweet heart. They had a baby together and one day, when the baby was about four months old, my friends wife was driving down the road by herself, pulled over to the side and she just died in her car.”

“She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.
But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.”

“The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.”

“She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.”

“What I saw was more than I could stand. The noise I heard had been made by Little Ann. All her life she had slept by Old Dan's side. And although he was dead, she had left the doghouse, had come back to the porch, and snuggled up by his side.”