They were both as disappointed with each other as they had been the first time they had made love thirty years earlier and realized why they hadn't stayed together in the first place.

My life felt stuck in fast forward and that I'd lost the remote control between the couch cushions years before.

All he could focus on that morning were the gaffs he'd drunkenly made the night before.

With the party over, Dana felt like one of the half-inflated balloons that forlornly floated a few inches from the floor.

That first night outside of the city he was unable to sleep as the sounds from the forest seemed louder than those of the old neighborhood.

I woke up that morning with a feeling that the world had subtly changed overnight and I had become the butt of a cosmic joke.

They all rolled over on their backs, wagged their proverbial tails, and let the demagogue have his day.