82/365 - S

A thousand and one words from you to me and back, each one a bridge. But what I wanted was your scent, your breath, your flesh, your core—a flame that still burns.

81/365 - Laurel

You'd get tangled up over nothing. Red-faced, spinning every which way. But you had good ideas and a heart. Did they not see? Whispering, they took the trembling you on a long walk down the springboard. And then they made you jump.

80/365 - H

You split yourself to pieces for the kids, a raucous, and yes, blissful undertaking. But I fear it rubs raw the part of you that you should own. Will your small flame still be there, lit, ready to shine through when they're grown?

79/365 - Talya

Talya. God's Dew. Maybe a muse in disguise. She saw into the future. Had a way of gliding through life, the way a celestial being would. Everything she touched turned to poetry, and, like an apple, I craved her.

78/365 - Katya

She was the Western wind, bringing American r's to our house behind the Iron Curtain. Then after we crossed the ocean to America, she took us to where we planted roots - West to begin again.

77/365 - Oly

You bastard, I loved you. You asked my boss to push the broom so you could have me first. Pine oil and poetry, fried fish, records in your cave, your New York stories. I wanted your baby.

76/365 - Adrian

His house was windows and blackberry bushes, his art black and white faces in crowns of trees. We drummed, never exchanging many words. Last time, I saw him with an entourage of women; a flock of wives wearing white turbans.

75/365 - Marcos

We meet at a jazz bar, then for two weeks hold hands, even when someone in a crowd tries to stone me, a mysterious moment we run away from together. He sends me perfumed letters and music. We dream of crossing borders to be together.

74/365 - Bob

Not many eat the grapes in Bob's symmetrical yard, tended by the hired man with the canister of poison. They rot and fall. Bob walks to the park, counts the dogs, then returns to check on wife Rose and his manicured shrubs.

73/365 - Ms. Y

We sit, listening to "romanchick" music: a raspy sailor pining for luscious hips and thighs. Her car's an oasis—smell of cinnamon and spice, orthodox icons to guide us. I want her to hear: you're beautiful.

72/365 - Jordan

He was a dark-haired boy; handsome, but with empty eyes. He was liked, in the in-crowd. And then one night, as the story went, he morphed into a monster that made the girls avert their gaze.

71/365 - Laurel B

The woman of a hundred blazers, each a different color to match her mood. A jovial lady, sometimes hectic and confused, she'd become a hawk, ice-blue eyes zeroing in on what mattered most-kids speaking their minds.

70/365 - Bogdanka

Bogdanka chain smokes, legs crossed, eyes narrowed, chin up in the air. A woman in black. A movie star. Torch singer, trapped in office desk land. She lights up another. Memories of the Old Country come flooding in.

69/365 - Admir

On Smack Down nights he beamed, eager to shout at the TV along with his three-year-old. "Keep up!" he'd say, broom in hand. Admir ran away from war and here was homesick to tears. Family was everything.

68/365 - Liliya

Those miniskirts made the boys blush, didn't she see? Too busy severing her ties with the thin-scarf village ladies from back home. Talking, her eyes would make contact, then swoop down to the ground, for fear of being found out.

67/365 - William

William wears his heart on his sleeve, sweaty from trabajo few appreciate. When he says sorry, his eyes water, he sprints out the door. His hometown is jungles, limestone caves, turquoise waters, and resorts spreading like a disease.

66/365 - Larry

Larryman always had a scheme: strike it big, rake in the dough, live like a blue collar king. A house and some money for poker. He wasn't one for much ass-kissing: one day at work, the next day gone.

65/365 - Dan

Dan was beer, books and buffoonery. A brilliant writer, or so his friends said. His agoraphobic wife became his best excuse, but more likely he made himself scarce when a girl he secretly liked broke his heart.

64/365 - Mindy

Mindy, the perky girl with a boring boyfriend, wasn't scared of a uniform. At Applebee's she jumped right into a manager seat. Sold phone plans on the side, which worked amazingly like a repellent.

63/365 - Bobby

Robert was Bobby. Or Owl. Or a walk in the woods. Eyes always smiling, breath withheld as if waiting for something: a better place, enlightenment... Tender, then gone. How did we drift so far apart?

62/365 - Pancho

The owner downs one Corona after another, watching the white-fleshed girls twirl, heaping plates in hand. Meanwhile Pancho churns out fancy gringo grub, each burrito a quarter closer to the new house for the familia, a school uniform for the hermana, a bus ticket home.

61/365 - Teresa

Teresa, madre de la comunidad. Her voice a hand, a song for: the girl whose mother was taken away; a grandmother, apron hiding her aching breast and tired thighs; a blinding farmer with family behind a fence guarded by guns.

60/365 - Noah

He was our kind of a boy, or so I thought. But when we, the sisters, unveiled the tall tales from which we all would build our house, Noah went looking for bigger fish to fry.

59/365 - Aram

Aram: a name that sends you sailing on a turquoise sea somewhere far. Behind his pretty face was a wafer-thin soul. His chess game went fast. One move and check, he had you by the throat. No-chin girl? Not a funny joke.

58/365 - Courtney

Gone for seventeen years and back again, Counterculture Courtney minces no words. She opens her door, serves soup and bread, laughs big. I know I can melt in her arms and cry.

57/365 - Erika

Erika lived around the corner, her yellow house warm and inviting. She only had her dad. Tragic, I thought. She should have talked some sense into her friend, my boyfriend's other girl.

56/365 - Bishop

The piano and this jazz cat from another era were a match made in heaven. With a raspy voice and a blink of his one good eye he would greet me. We never spoke at length. He was too much of a man.

55/365 - Sanna

Like waterfalls, her people's sentences flow and drop from voiced to breathy, the last words inhaled. Her people rub their skin raw in the heat of the sauna. Their houses are made of pine. Around each corner is a lake, waiting.

54/365 - Faith

For three nights I, Iphigenia, called her mother. But she, in her red velvet dress, always kept her distance. Never having had a child, she could not fathom what it would feel like to lose a daughter to the gods.

53/365 - Bernhard

The jolly robot speaks to me again of caulk and his love of machines. Rent is due, he says. I dread the pipe surgery he's clamoring to perform. When he turns away I pull the curtains closed: "Bye bye, landlord. Go away."