My phone chirped, coming to life. Don't forget: yogurt and bananas for your smoothie. Followed by three heart emojis. A text from my wife who had been dead for a year and two months. I felt a stab of rage. Definitely not the “warm fuzzy feeling” described in the promotional sales claptrap. When Diane passed, I wanted the simplest, most straightforward process. Take the body to the industrial oven and turn it to dust. Give me the dust in a cardboard box. Done.

It wasn’t until I left my town that I began to learn its secrets. Winter break after my first semester in university, I drove home the back way and fell in love for the first time with the turns in the roads, the bareness of the deciduous trees on either side, river birch peeling and turning to slush in the canoes of the highway shoulder. I left my home behind and arrived at my house. I hadn’t started calling it “my parent’s house” yet. I wasn’t sure what to call it.

In Tacoma's winter, bright and rainy grace,

A tale unfolds in each raindrop's embrace.

Tacoma Elf Storage, a festive sight,

The mystery continues to fervent delight […]

Not for man's conventions but

For the peace with the wild,

I practice sitting still–

For mornings on my back deck

To watch the soft rabbit in the grass

And the yearling buck who steps slow

Out of wood's edge to curl

Into a bed of clover he nibbles […]

the world is a dangerous
place to love a child

I am reckless

to want their future
above water

to not write
their identification
on their backs
in permanent ink […]

There are memories of my life that, no matter how many times I recall them, they only play in slow motion. Though I know they happened at the speed of life, my memory willfully recalls them in seconds, stretched out to emphasize the fleeting moments, in an attempt to squeeze out every bit of reminiscence.

Mike comes right over. Middle of the night. Three in the goddamn morning on a Thursday. I call and say I need him to come over and he acts like it ain’t even a thing. He don’t even ask why. There are ​​friends; there are good friends; and there are best friends. Mike’s my best friend. Some friends would help you move. Some would help you move a body.

I will arise now and go to Henderson Bay,

to the old, shingled cabin with sun-worn decking,

and mice that run through sunbeams, across the top of the couch.

A sleeping porch will I have there, windowed with sheets

of plastic, where the music of the creek underneath

and the sound of waves lapping on the beach float in.

And I shall have the peace of lazy summer days spent

with my younger sisters and brother, urging, “Jump! Jump!”

Swinging out from the bulkhead, on the knotted rope,

I will drop into the frigid salt water at high tide.

I will sputter at the cold. My sisters and brother will applaud.

My best friend, Michelle Ledbetter, will caution me,

“Careful of the spikes.” I will climb with Michelle,

up onto the old, wrecked barge, washed up down the way.

Soon after my family moved to Federal Way, my mom told me that the SeaTac Mall had the first ever Cinnabon. The flagship. In my seven-year-old mind, this meant importance, gravitas. We tried it out one day, the gloopy mess of dough and icing practically heaving atop our paper plates. Even as a typically greedy child, I knew that there was something excessive about a Cinnabon, that it could be the gateway to some very bad things. Judiciously, my mothersliced mine into quarters with the flimsy plastic knife. Soon after gobbling up a few bites, I went droopy and lethargic for the rest of the afternoon.

That day, I learned that Cinnabon was a luxury that would make you pay in the end. But it was one of the few claims to fame that Federal Way had, other than being a place where the Green River Killer would go hot-tubbing or where apartments were cheap. I’d felt part of something important when we lived in Seattle, where you could travel 600 feet up the Space Needle or watch people throw fish in the Market. Down in the suburbs, I felt beige andinsubstantial. Even at a young age, I noticed this difference in how a place could make you feel.

The staccato of Nadine’s shoes on the rocks and the rising panic in her breathing created a jarringcombination of sounds. She hadn’t quite broken the tree line yet when the sky faded from a paleblue to a deepening violet. The only thing worse to her than being outside after sunset was being inthe woods after sunset. That was unthinkable.

She took a moment to steady her breath appreciate the silhouettes of the house and trees against theartistry in the sky. Her chest burned and her heart felt as though it would leap out toward thehorizon. Nadine started when a muted rustling caught her attention. She couldn’t place its source, soshe turned her head this way and that to try to pick it out. Quickly, she gave up looking and strodetoward the house. She noticed as she got closer to the ornate wooden door, the sound intensified. Itwent from a soft rustle to the rush of static in her very soul like that of a record that spun long afterthe orchestra had packed up and gone home.

Every time I stand beneath a Coastal Redwood my mouth hangs open as a thousand words try to escape from my chest all at once.

Every time, the only one that makes it through is a confounded “How?”

How can something grow so titanic?

I know the short answer: it’s a plant, a genetic byproduct of water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. Redwoods just get a little overzealous about it.

I even know the long answer; a seed the size of a grain of sand falls hundreds of feet to the soil. With enough sunlight, water, luck, and time, a sentient monolith the width of a Boeing 747 soars into the sky, spreading out branches the size of tree trunks with twigs the size of saplings, tall enough to shade the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

And still, “How?”

What other word fits when witnessing a miracle?

We left in a hurry so there’s nothing left for you in the housebut if you look out the window you can see the encroaching flamesgutting the town along their warpathsave the only church still standing on Ash Street

At noon you count the bulbous heads of the dandelionsat 3pm the sparrows line up on the telephone wires across the street

“The Miami Conference is different than other conferences,” Dr. Hines told me one day, when he came to my dental parlor for a new crown on his second molar. “The heat just gets into your pores. Everybody goes a little crazy. I saw a well-respected oral surgeon from Ohio run off with some woman’s Pomeranian. I guess he took it back to his hotel room and fed it an entire pizza.”

“Pomeranians aren’t supposed to eat pizza,” I said.

“Not that one, anyway.”

I first became acquainted with Dr. Hines in the fall of 1934, at the North Dakota School of Dentistry. I do not know whether it was luck or pure coincidence which led us both to begin our practices in Chicago, but he allowed no one but myself to perform dentistry on him, and, at the time, I was newly divorced and grateful for the company.

Little neighbor girl, your head once bounced above my fence to the creak of trampoline springs. That night your neck bent down below your kitchen table to shelter from the shell shot. One grazed your abdomen. They say you are okay, but your trampoline is still quiet.

Usually, the strange invasion of unwanted touch throws my ogre switch in a heartbeat, but at that moment, it soothed me. Like that first sip of bourbon from a new bottle, she warmed something in me that had gone untended for ages. Careful, I thought to myself. If this night’s headed where I think it is, I’d better keep my nightshirt on. I wouldn’t want her to catch a glimpse of those old battle scars and run away screaming.

The gun was clean. Loaded. Double-checked. His knife, the one he had carried always, she held a moment before strapping it to her belt. There were five who must die today. Outside her blinded window, dawn was about to break over the minarets. The muezzin sing-songed beckonings to adhan.

The men who took him last night hadn’t seen her. His body would not get cold before she enacted her revenge. The first was Gadi. He was a whore-lover. The second was Azzam, he had a scar across his face from his penchant for bar fights. Zero was famously addicted to opium. Marid sold carpets at the bazaar. Jibril was a gambler. Despite the call the adhan, she knew the hypocrites wouldn’t be among the crowds.

“Squirrels hate robots.” He says it with such earnestness that it catches me off guard

“I beg your pardon.”

“Squirrels. Hate. Robots. It’s really not that complicated.” The five year old is right. It is not a complicated concept to comprehend and yet, I have questions, not the least of which is, ‘if squirrels hate robots, do robots in turn, hate squirrels?’ “I could draw you a picture of it if that would make it easier for you.” I’m not a fan of his condescending attitude.

“How do you know this, about the robots and the squirrels and what not?” I say this while looking for a pencil and paper. As much as I want to smack him, if I’m honest, I also really want him to draw me a picture of squirrels hating on robots.