death
— A young poet traces Dostoevsky's footsteps through his former spaces, feeling his presence in stairs, doors, and pages as a white night falls on St. Petersburg.
— A girl visits her ancestors' graves in St. Petersburg, encountering a man who offers water to wash the stones, and wonders about the Russia she might have known.
— A prose poem imagines the inner life of a crab—its loneliness, fear, and anger—questioning whether people remember the being they've hurt after mounting it on a wall.
— A teenage surfer faces the same deadly waves that killed his father at the Mavericks competition, then risks everything to save his friend from drowning.
— A digger at a World War III archaeological site discovers a general's journal that reveals how soldiers were lost in a catastrophic storm, changing his family's fortunes.
— A girl grows from child to grandmother, repeatedly passing an old woman who rakes leaves through the seasons, only recognizing her absence when it's too late.
— Beverly Henderson, orphaned in 1950s Idaho, befriends a raccoon named Bandit who later betrays her, causing an explosion that kills her father and leaves her in a 13-year coma.
— A monarch butterfly loses half her wing crossing a polluted city on her migration to Mexico, but continues on foot, determined to be the first to complete the journey.
— A girl attends her father's opening night performance in an opera about the atomic bomb, where the show's depiction of nuclear devastation awakens her anger about historical injustice.
— A young person processes grief after a funeral, watching her sister's breakdown, feeling her heart chip away, and struggling to reconnect with life afterward.