She was an unlucky mare, an erstwhile school horse: sway-backed and tired and hungry for love. I was unlucky myself, and did not mind her ungainliness…

For years, [my son’s] death wish trumped everything. If he could not perform the act himself, then he wanted me to do it for him. It was the one and only sacrifice I could never make for him.

One night in the slow, hot crawl of late summer, our cat spontaneously combusted.

(nominated for the Pushcart Prize)

We grew up near the mountains and the woods. We knew from forests.

Right while I’m getting my braces, and saliva I can’t swallow is pooling in the back of my mouth, Doc Hallowell tells me about square dancing.

On a blossom-scented spring day, my son Benjy, almost eleven and off kilter, begged me to help him kill himself.

Ten years ago, things were already going steeply downhill but I was not prepared to admit it.

Ute Schmidt’s first lesson, upon arriving in Boston, is that Americans talk fast and laugh at things that are not funny.