The Piano Teacher

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

"People can be so loathsome, don't you think?" she says. "If we aren't together in the future, please don't think of me with hatred. Think of me kindly or forget me. I always try to do that. Think with kindness and don't judge. And know the entire situation." "What on earth are you saying? Don't take such absurd leaps." He feels like she's punched him in the stomach, cannot feign nonchalance, but cannot say too, don't leave me.

"You won't even look at me!" she cried. "You won't give me even that. You've always been mean with your attention, so measured." She looked down at herself. She had dressed with care this morning, mindful of the impression she wanted to give: quiet, not reproachful, confident. This had translated into a knee-length navy cotton voile dress with covered buttons all down the front, a few decorative pleats: tailored, not fussy, freshly washed hair held back with a navy satin headband. She tamped down the word that kept rising to the surface of her consciousness: fool, fool.

He shakes her. He wants to bite her cheek, viciously, until flesh tears off and blood runs down his chin. He wants to devour her whole, until she feels the pain he has been feeling. The pain he caused her too.

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

"It's funny," I said. "It's very funny. And it's a lot of fun, too, to be in love." "Do you think so?" her eyes looked flat again. "I don't mean fun that way. In a way it's an enjoyable feeling." "No," she said. "I think its hell on earth."

The Dead

The Dead by Jones Very

I see them crowd on crowd they walk the earth

Dry, leafless trees no Autumn wind laid bare;

And in their nakedness find cause for mirth,

And all unclad would winter's rudeness dare;

No sap doth through their clattering branches flow,

Whence springing leaves and blossoms bright appear;

Their hearts the living God have ceased to know,

Who gives the spring time to th'expectant year;

They mimic life, as if from him to steal

His glow of health to paint the livid cheek;

They borrow words for thoughts they cannot feel,

That with a seeming heart their tongue may speak;

And in their show of life more dead they live

Than those that to the earth with many tears they give.

Snow-Flakes

"Snow-Flakes" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

Miles from Nowhere

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun 

" 'I'm sorry about your mother,' he whispered. I felt a tiny collapsing in my chest and it took me a moment to correctly identify the pang, not as grief, but as jealousy. I hadn't loved my mother the way he had loved his wife. I had left her when she needed me most, and in the end, she died, in a car, completely alone with nothing but the sound of metal crushing her. I couldn't grieve for her, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't deserve to. I looked at Mr. McCommon, his hands smother his face, his chest flinching. He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of. He had a garage, full of her belongings, and all I had was my guilt. It took on its own shape and smell and nestled in the pit of my body, and it would sleep and play and walk with me for decades to come."