“The night we met, you needled your way in through a tiny rip in the screen.”

“The jellyfish first hovered unreachable, removed as backlit clouds.”

“I’m paying attention to the tornado watch that may become a tornado warning across all of north Mississippi. It was calm outside when I came to bed, but in Mississippi in spring the weather can change that fast.”

Traveling with you is being hungry, always. We prowl the sites like jackals, waiting for our chance to jump. Hot, sugary churros chased down by beer after beer at the ancient bar behind the new colonialist temple, and the ruins of the older Aztec one where we ducked in to escape the rain and warm our July-cooled bones, and stayed until we were as dry and comfortable as the dogs we are, our conversation the only fire, and the music, and the only other people in the place another couple, she with heavy, tightly constrained hips and red, plum-red, hair.

“I get to forty eight and stop counting. Laying each coat on the bed, shoulder to shoulder, they make a heaping, unruly camel’s back that could topple over at any moment. Again and again I return to the closet, lift out a different coat, search all the pockets, drop the hanger in the bag and spread it on the pile.”

“I thought they were rocks, but they’re turtles, moving slowly over one another to sun. Stretching out their gray necks. There’s a man behind me saying, ‘did you get one of these?’ to passersby and holding out a pamphlet titled Are You a Good Person?”

“My uncle drinks, my mother worries. They put me in the middle, use me as a topicof conversation when things get dull. They send me letters and out-of-print copies of their favorite books with thoughtful inscriptions.”

“Form 4: Self-Care Checklist

Instructions: as a new mom it is very important for you to take self-care seriously. Please mark each form of self-care you participate in. Please see footnotes for extra detail:”

“They avoid the family-friendly path, brush past the hikers beware sign and into the tallgrass Fire Loop where anything can happen from the waist down.”

“May 6, 1942, Richard wrote Toto, ‘I can’t tell you anything about our movements or what we are doing, but I can tell you that it looks like we are going to be in the thick of things before long.’”

“I never learned the value of letting decay and active rest refine me. Instead, I gathered perfection around me like a shield. It protected me, and trapped me in.”

“You pull into the last parking spot. You notice you parked a little crooked and want to reverse to straighten up, but there’s a white car with tinted windows behind you.”

“ I was uncomfortable with that thought. How often should you take stock of your life and evaluate the direction in which you’re headed? “

“I realized that was the first time in a long time that he was riding as a passenger and traveling much further beyond his regular five-mile radius.”

“These are her thoughts as she tries not to touch the summer’s welts and lumps and itches that insects have bestowed on her, as she notices waterbugs accumulating on the glue traps placed on the kitchen floor each month by the exterminator, as she tries and tries to swat the fruit flies multiplying around the rim of the covered compost bin, as she learns that certain beetles are chewing up the most ancient trees on Earth, as she reads Oliver Milman on the tricks and tribulations of insects.”

“Even when I was awake, fear dogged me. As my mom carried Finnegan down the street, I imagined her tripping and slamming into the concrete sidewalk. I pictured myself stepping over my injured mother to tend to my son, the necessary horror of casting her aside.”

“For the next several years, Mom was parasite-free. But then we heard rumors that an aunt had set her up with someone she encountered through her occasional hobby of drunk driving. My aunt had met this man at one of their court-ordered AA meetings. He owned a house, supposedly. He owned his own business, supposedly.“