The highest hierarchy of the crystalline sky begins just beyond the orbit of the fifty-second Aristotelian planet. This part of the cosmos already belongs to the INVISIBLE HORIZON. Isidore of Seville, who describes it, never saw snow himself. Nor does he claim to know the creatures of flame, the six-winged, eyeless beings that make up the order of the seraphim.

She was half the length of my little finger. A grown woman not much bigger than a bullet. My job was to keep her safe. A man’s mission, no doubt. So I ducked into this room whose ceiling was a planked, hardwood 

The train arrived at about six o’clock on a cold, wet November morning. The fog was so thick it was almost impossible to see. I was wearing my coat collar up and my hat shoved down around my ears, but still the fog penetrated all the way to my bones. The apartment where Leonidas lived was in a neighborhood far from the center of town

The night before their appointment, they sent Haley one final e-mail in which they reaffirmed the when and where and tastefully restated their excitement. But Reuben managed to smuggle in a request: Would Haley mind wearing “normal clothes”? He was about to hit send when Brenna, proofreading over his shoulder, announced

We lived frugally. If somebody was coming to the house, my mother moved the plastic gallon jugs of milk to the front of the refrigerator and filled the other shelves with vegetables from the crisper. The only meal my mother did not cook herself was our Saturday lunch. 

Little Edgar came home from school wanting to do something to help Little Rose. The “little” thing was something they’d picked up from a classmate’s mother who’d visited the school to talk about Personal Empowerment. She felt that no child should be slighted by being called “little” or “junior” or any other diminutive. 

She cut three slashes into a piece of chorizo, started wedging Valiums into it, and worried in a vague way that something unusual would be required of her. She thought she remembered David saying that he gave the dog nine of his Valiums before the groomer.

The ants had gotten in through the shattered bottom half of Leslie’s laptop screen. Now they crawled across her green- and blue-tinted Word documents and websites one or two at a time 

Two months ago, when I first arrived in this township just short of the border, I resolved to guard my eyes, and I could not think of going on with this piece of writing unless I were to explain how I came by that odd expression.

His belt buckle clanks against the floor of the bedroom, sounds so far away that he waits for an echo. He steps out of his jeans, nudges them aside with a bare foot. He pulls off his