Radney stood there like a lump of flesh, in boxers that had parrots printed all over them. He was completely bald on top but had fashioned his monk’s fringe into a tiny ponytail.

You stared at the textbook on your kitchen table. Your desk was next to your bed and you had to be as far away from your bed as possible.

I am the Alpha and Omega, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. I am Elohim and Shàngdi, Hu and Zhŭ, Kartār and Khuda. Say my name.

What about unconditional faith? Isn’t it golden? Thoughts ricochet inside Hasan’s mind as he recollects the moments when he felt heavy in his heart because of believing in Allah. The moments of humiliation, confusion, anger, of being called backward, an antique, an old-fashioned fool by people half his age.

Words and water are life-giving: strictly essential. Like Noah’s flooded earth, words inundate, superfluously powerful. “The waters of the flood were upon the face of the earth…all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”

You find a spot a few feet away from the pool. As you stomp on the shovel you are surprised at how sad you feel, but a momentary lapse causes you to consider rushing the burial so you can get back to the pool and go home, which only replaces the original sadness with an agonizing guilt.

I look outside from my tall window in the living room. Our living room is small, and the big window helps because it gives you a sense of spaciousness. I see fields that are green and yellow and trees far away. Their leaves have started to fall because it’s autumn.

She didn’t like how he kept calling her Myna. She had told him as much, but he persisted. It made her feel small and invalidated, like a gregarious little bird of her namesake, which always needed protection. She had resisted calling herself Myna, it seemed to lend her insignificance.

We do not know what subject Naveed Bhai studied in university, but when he got out, he asked his father to wire him a small amount of money, which he invested in a shop in a strip mall in Alief. Actually, a friend of his father suggested the business to him, accompanied him to the site and negotiated the purchase of the shop.

Anne is not efficient. The date of the closing is set, and she needs to be out. It is as cruel and simple as that.

I frown, miraculously suppressing an impulse to laugh. Is my father going crazy? How come I haven’t noticed a sign although we are living, separately, under the same roof?

Animals in the area had begun to grow hands, opposable thumbs in fact, while the rest of their bodies remained the same. They’d heard bobcats and coyotes howling off in the distance, maybe on the now mostly abandoned golf course.

Then it struck her. “Why, I’ve taken the Lord into my heart. That’s it. I should have realized.” 

Your mom thinks you should be recording emotions, not just what happens.  You don’t really want to, but what the hell.  You can try it once.  All you can feel at this part of the dream is ... fear. 

That evening, while Mr. Klein and I were halfway across the river, another boat came downstream so he lowered the line and waited for it to pass. It was a big fiberglass boat, and it didn’t slow down. Instead, it steered towards us and then arced away, sending its wake in our direction.

Rebecca sank further, dropped down to the first floor, her own office. A room empty of the watery substance and so her body crashed to the floor, dripping with a thickening blue. The screaming of the alarm was still strong in her ears.

I pictured a man with such a long mustache that it curled around his body hundreds of times, making him look like a spool of thread. A week earlier, my father had taken me to the barbershop, where I had seen several long mustaches.

The writer notes the bittersweet goodbye and the baggage that comes along with being a spouse to a military man.