A divorced woman reckons with losing the closeness that she took for granted in her marriage when her ex-husband and his new wife come to visit.

A woman considers her possible shortcomings when her boyfriend tells her that he doesn’t like some things about her. After a period of reflection, she acknowledges the futility of self-deprecation.

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.

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

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

A three-years-married couple have lost the spark that once excited them, leading the wife to venture into tentative love affairs.

A man meets his girlfriend’s mother. While at first she is cold to him, because of a secret his girlfriend won’t speak of, they grow close, begin to depend on each other.

A woman narrates the experience of sending her young daughter off every weekend to stay with her ex-husband and his boyfriend- until things change.

When a mother takes her children to buy a puppy from another mother, she finds an unsettling household and a child chained like a dog in the backyard. Through their alternating narratives, both mothers reflect on what it means to love your children.

Vignettes of a number of relationships, most of them troubled, are glimpsed through the descriptions of creatures in this bestiary of the imaginary.