"Monday isn’t so bad when the weekend is just a concept for others to plan."

"Marina wakes, drowsy and disoriented, near the ocean floor. A phantom tremor pulses beneath her skin."

"I’m alone in the den tonight, gnawing on what you said last September when our little pride lounged poolside in Zanzibar after that terrific Tanzanian hunt."

"Before the invasion when everyone was blissful and ignorant or young and ignored and me and the husband slept peacefully at night, a beetle made its way to the island with a horn like a rhinoceros and the jaws of a pit bull and a voracious gnawing appetite."

"What if he’d stayed home for his daughter, Chloe’s, sweet sixteen party, helped his wife wrap presents, made his “famous” nachos loaded with chipotles, grilled corn, and pepper jack."

"The low fuel light blinks on as we pull into a Walmart gas station and I feel the tension in the car ease."

"He reached down to the baby carrier at his feet and adjusted the blanket canopied over its handle, shutting out the wind and the low November sun."

"watches it run down and cover me; says, we have begun the season of dying; (the one for us; not the one for everyone else; that comes later;)"

"Last night I dreamt PD Walker hosted a murder mystery at his house in DC. He showed us hidden nooks for inappropriate dalliances; he served only chicken salad with sticks of celery."

"My new neighbor, Julia, with her dangly snowflake earrings and how close she’s standing, laughing at my jokes, touching my arm, electric—the way her red dress clings in all the right places that I could never pull off..."

"They are so hungry, my monsters. I coax them out from under my bed, and they won’t shut up. Feed me, says the little one. Feed me, says the biggest. Feed me, the skinny one begs."

"You still speak Crowspeak from the time 20 crows banded together and snatched Jimmy Parker away as the two of you walked to the movies."

"Or so I thought. It was just a job, just a soap opera. A ridiculous one, sure, what with my upcoming wedding to a monkey."

"They had been full, full, full, and now it is so lovely to be empty, to be so full of potential and not the leavings of people’s lives."

"Bob and I are at the zoo, checking out the macaques from the wide viewing window, when I notice a muscular man in a tiger t-shirt checking out Bob’s ass."

"Had to cut our trip short after Timmy drowned."

"But no longer the seatbelt-less, high-heel, buttoned down tucked, bows on pigtails, paper map, stop for a single precious photo to be developed months hence."

"The doctor with the serpentine stethoscope coiled around his neck shakes his head. He insists there’re some unusual murmurs in your mom’s heart, and I’m arguing with him it can’t be the heart. All she does is rant, scream, and swear."

"The night is bitter. My teeth ache, frozen down to their roots. I prod them with my tongue. Sharp splinters blossom from each socket, like shattered kernels of hard winter corn."

"I talked to my sister about it, because sometimes she was wise, even if she was annoyingly optimistic."