“Lately, I have been missing you ‘quietly’. But the imprints you’ve left behind are oh so ‘loud’—”

“Emerging from their long, uninspired slumber, the BURNT OUT WRITER faces the new year—”

“In terms of pets you had over the years, Cooper was one of your favorites. He was a big, dopey thing who would thud about the house and scratch at the doors when he wanted out—”

“I can’t sleep,” Your daughter whispers from your doorway—

“It started with one. Inert on its back, ribbed belly and spindly limbs splayed, Emily found the cockroach waiting for her by the front door—”

“It’s a balmy, summer afternoon. The miserable sort, where one wishes to peel their skin off just for respite. It’s a good thing then that the couple are half-dressed, necking at one another out in the open field-”

“It was a quarter past five when the man was subject, to a strange pounding in his head-”

“Eighteen, on the drive home from school - Her hands were tensed at the wheel-”

“The thing wearing your skin never speaks to you. At night, it lurks by your bedside, watching you with its ascetic gaze. Waiting ever so patiently-”

“When I was ten, a crow fell in my backyard. It didn’t spectacularly flounder or land, it fell; it was a young one-”

“You are unequivocally dead. And at the end of it all, there is no shining gate nor fiery layered pit awaiting you—”