loneliness
— A trumpet teacher arrives for lessons but instead of teaching, drinks espresso and talks about his Sicilian homeland, Mount Etna, and the village where he feels at home.
— A key narrates its existence from hanging on a hook to being lost forever when it falls from a bag onto a cold white floor.
— 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 child's plea to be forgotten transforms everyday details—soup, Fruit Loops, a voice that travels through walls—into a meditation on presence and erasure.
— A robot travels the world—from beaches to northern lights to hailstorms—waiting for someone to call, revealing loneliness through its metal body and computer brain.
— A child's poem transforms an empty mansion into a haunted space through accumulating details of abandonment and decay.
— A child's boredom becomes a moored boat rocking in a dreary bay, while stars twinkle merrily and gulls squawk terribly above.
— A meditation on feeling trapped by others' expectations transforms into a plea for empathy and a vision of freedom through flight and song.
— After her best friend moves to Switzerland, an eight-year-old girl struggles with loneliness at school and finds solace in their Skype conversations, though nothing feels the same.
— 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.