I never knew what total darkness was
until the night of the hurricane 
with windows boarded up

Sadness comes in small increments

In the terrorist’s apartment
eggshells and onion skins
were all that remained 

How to describe music
to a deaf person?

Cobblestones mark the spot where
the Berlin Wall used to be

In the parking lot 
an old man tells an old woman
“Get out of my life”

Reading the line 
in an Anne Sexton poem.

We are made of stardust

Sand is the excrement of sea creatures

Fishing with my father—

he scrapes the scales 
with the sharp-edged knife,
gives me the bladder balloon

Filling the big freezer in the den
where the jigsaw puzzles
are piled in one corner

How did you learn to cook, my mother asked,
not remembering our times together
in the kitchen