“The flyscreen door is torn at the edges. Fraying. I open it and knock on the wood. The sound rhymes with my heartbeat.”

“She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.”

“I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.”

“The only sound I'll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps”

“I let the front door slam shut behind me and the fly screen rattle. It was as if each door was kicking me out of the old life I'd lived in that house. I was being thrown out into the world, new. The broken, leaning gate creaked open, let me out, and I gently placed it shut. I was gone, and from down the street, maybe fifty yards away, I looked back for a second at the house where I lived. It wasn't the same any more. It never would be. I kept walking.”

“He's waking her in every moment.Disturbing her.Reaching through her and abandoning her at the same time.He throws her down and takes her and cuts her open. The bedspring leaks - a howling, desperate noise of falling down and springing up, even though they don't want to. Refusal is pointless. Complaint has no use. Some crying crawls to the doorway where I stand. It hobbles out from the gap in the door and lands at my feet”

“It's the sound of my breathing that gets me, pouring down into my lungs and then tripping back up my throat.”