The eyes of the hairdresser's head unnerved me, they seemed real, gold-flecked, soft honey.  I remembered the burnt doll I had found, one arm charred and melted, unremembered, lost.

The girl in the airport was wearing a cowboy hat, a short jacket, and her belly smoothed out and caught me for a moment with its shape, muscle spreading into hip, then dark cotton pants.  "Do you believe in me?" she asked, when I looked at her a second time.  I shivered.  I didn't know.  I didn't know if I should.

Laughter, falling stars, wisdom in the deep beneath, found through the quiet moments, the press of child faces on glass in a passing school bus, the burden of understanding death, the history we so easily forget.

A red coin, a painted mirror, painted white, and scratched, so small edged patches still reflected.  I could make out half of my eye.  Then I turned on the hot water and the mirror fogged and I could see nothing at all.

There are certain insects that live and die having sex.  Unlike eagles, who skirt the edge of death to copulate, certain insects give it all up and pass through to the other side.

Do like the mushrooms do and build your foundation on the fact that everything will change. Trees fall, people die; nothing lasts forever and the mushrooms bet their dinner on that.

If that doesn't work for you, just eat the mushrooms.  There is a universe of God-like truth in there.

If I don’t say the thought right, I might destroy it.

He huddled, his hair matted and sticky, his body covered with mud, fingers tracing spirals of paint.

A touch to his shoulder from the boy in the diaper.  The sister stood nearby with a dirty streak on one cheek, red fuzzy hair, and bubblegum. Zeb knew he should find clothes soon, he was cold.

"Mister," the sister said, "what is that?"

A clean embryonic skull grew forth from the grey brick, colored with red and yellow ochre and the sticky blue paste clinging to Zeb's fingers. Etched around the skull was an eagle-figure with wings rising from human shoulders.

"It's me."