INT. DARK OFFICE  –  NIGHT Purple rain slicks the window like a nervous sweat on the Fat Man. Cigar smoke curls under a flickering ceiling fan. A man in shadows, voice-over begins ... NARRATOR (V.O.) She walked out like a midnight confession — fast, quiet, and meant to be forgotten. She walked out of my life like a gunshot in an empty church — loud, final, echoing forever. But I don’t forget. Not her. Not that night. I got this picture burned into the back of my skull. Her

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would seem as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we dearly loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may those patient

There is a particular tone in which the phrase “Christian family values” is most often uttered here in the 51st state and the 48 contiguous ones to the south. But it is not the tone of the Sermon on the Mount. It is a tone of laminated certainty. It comes pre-installed with a stock photo: smiling nuclear unit, 2.3 children, father upright and payroll-bearing, mother serene and casserole-adjacent, the whole scene lit with the soft-focus glow of a cable news chyron. The phras