Sublime

Another thing she had torched.

Relish of mutual mean-spiritedness and high discernment.

derisive

What a mystery the way things act on us, like secret messages just to you as you sit in the dark.

Catching it destroys it, and I felt like I was disappearing, too.

senselessly, I mumbled, “You can leave the mollusks.”

This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.

One can’t ask to be left alone, she thought, or not to be touched, even once in a great while, without creating a scene—without changing everything.

blandishments