At the end of the meeting, the villagers agreed to contribute shillings and pounds to sponsor Elochi to a university in America.

Another image rises to us both: A man hunched before a TV, watching historical documentaries, correcting incorrect facts. Rasputin was not a priest, damn it.

None speak of how the streets collide in coarse seams like scars, the fresh cobbles unable to level with the ones shaken from their mortar by uncountable seasons.

Jenna says that he typically goes for redheads, so I run to Target and buy a box of hair dye.

You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.

The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.

I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.

I’d never heard of anyone having a second baby right after the first one, but everything was so strange in those early days of motherhood that I just acted on instinct.

He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.

When Laika the space dog comes back, bulleted to earth in a tiny white escape pod that dissolves upon opening, nobody can believe it.

On the first day of our new life together, my husband realized that I was not interested in theoretical debate. He said it was okay by him and went out to get some pancake mix.

A man with a fistful of showbags said, “That cow sounds like a person trying to sound like a cow.”