In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

As a woman slips in and out of sleep, her dreams become windows to moments in her life.

A man thinks about his relationship with his parents (especially his mother) as he watches them grow old. He then realizes that he is now old too.

Over dinner, an observer reflects on mothers and their omnipresent prevalence in children’s lives.

A story with an unconventional structure that asks "What is your number one priority?"

A woman meticulously and obsessively reflects on the vanishing of her sister.

With elaborate descriptions of the body, a husband muses about his relationship with his delicate wife. Reflecting on their good and bad days, the husband oscillates between worrying about their future and feeling passionate love.

After kicking her husband out and changing the locks, a mother imagines he is still living with her, distant and uninterested in sex. Lying in bed, she conjures up old memories and imagines new ones, grappling with questions of selfhood, identity, womanhood, and motherhood. One night, her real husband returns, and she lets him back in.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

Following his breakup, a Japanese college student uses savings from his relationship as a means to quit his summer mowing job, but not without first helping a woman who asks, but doesn't appear to need, for her lawn to be mowed.