What’s the use of returning to the story of a dead love? Not to find “what happened,” but why it matters. To find matter—that place where love and death kiss, that place of creation and destruction. To find the glimpses of art and heart in my own story, the small sediments that arrange and settle, then again rise and rearrange.

“The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop “Leaving One” by Ralph Angel “A Cat in an Empty Apartment” by Wisława Szymborska “Apples” by Deborah Digges “Michiko Nogami (1946–1982)” by Jack Gilbert “Eating Alone” by Li-Young Lee “The Potter” by Peter Levitt “Black Dog, Red Dog” by Stephen Dobyns “The Word” by Mark Cox “Death” by Maurycy Szymel “This” by Czeslaw