Back and forth all day she flits /
and through the hole in their house she fits / not just each different thing she brings /but herself too, making sure each thing / is put in its proper place inside / until she's finally satisfied.
"Climbing is about rising above your current situation. Sometimes, down on the ground, you can get lost. You lose the sense of where you really are because all you can see is what’s right around you."
Toad noticed her skin. Red streaks had formed on the backs of her hand, and spots had bubbled up around her wrist and below her elbow. It was happening: she was getting reptile skin.
My brother Jack can't talk. I have to say that first. There are lots of things people can't do. That's just the way it goes. What you can't do doesn't define you.
"We all make choices. We all forge our chains for those we love."
At the back of the boxcar, something small and almost human crouched in the dimness. The creature wasn’t in a cage. Whenever Henry’s father locked this animal behind bars, it screeched so loudly that Henry begged for it to be let out.
They reached the top of the slope leading up to the cavern’s mouth. The shadows clustered at the throat of the cave, and they gathered and darkened in the gullet. There were no eyes gleaming in the depths of the cave, no glints of light reflecting...
When our great-grandchildren
learn to live on Mars
will they come for a visit
across the sea of stars?
Jay looks over at me now, twirling the stem of the leaf between her fingers. “I wanted to be an artist. Like a painter with an easel and a French beret, that’s how I pictured it. But now I want to make comic books. I want to make stories about kids...
As she stood there in the kitchen doorway, staring into the yard at Uncle Ralph’s truck, Wendy felt devastated. She did not want to lose her piano. Just as with her mother’s leaving, she felt there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening.