The stoic dove—its feathers ruffling wildly—remained on the wind-whipped branch like a protective totem against the coming storm. 

 I had something to say but it slipped from my grasp like a wriggling fish headed back to sunless waters. 

 He watched the squirrel shoring up its nest with leaves and realized they really were the only ones in the neighborhood not bothering to do home repairs.  

 The beloved city existed solely in memory. 

The curdled milk was just one more example of their culture of complacency, in Clark's opinion.  

The hazy light matched her mental acuity that morning. 

He needs a moral blanket and a viceless pillow. 

There were endless routes and ways and sidestreets and paths but they all ended up at the same place. 

Frailty, fallibility, fear, were the hallmarks of her family. 

 All the world's pain was encompassed in that one long mournful wail.  

 Advice for the young: wander the world then begin your journey. 

She was drawn to darkness mistaking it for light. 

The goose sat alone in the field plaintively honking. 

The art of conversation is dead, IMHO LOL. 

 Once the tongue unloosed the words were unstoppable.

Any time Dan's memory faltered, he immediately thought of the fate that had befallen his father. 

When it rained, the pain in his shoulder was a visceral reminder that the past was always present. 

Geraldine, with her constant fog of darkness, envied the weeping willow and the mourning dove who seemed gleeful by comparison. 

 Convince yourself (if you haven't already).

Waiting for the tipping point, she knew, was the worst part. 

 We'd become better at identifying corporate logos than types of trees.

The mourning moon veiled in clouds lamented for its lost lover the morning sun. 

 We consumed and we consumed and we consumed but nothing could completely satisfy. 

Claire decided she'd rather stay in a cocoon, at least a little longer. 

 Time wore away memory until it was as smooth as sea glass. 

 The young wanted to kill time; the old to preserve it. 

 In the twilight, the dancers looked like ancestral spirits returned to reclaim what they'd lost. 

 There are some of us who solely exist in the space between dreaming and waking when these two worlds coexist and they're called artists. 

Weekends held no joy for gig workers. 

 Most of Greg's conversations were with ghosts.