"Careful," she warned. "A [drop] of [needles] in your [mouth] could damage your tongue." "Mom," he said, "why can't you ever let me learn from my own mistakes?"

A [drop] that lands atop of a [ten] could lead to a thousand," he said. "Stranger things have happened."

Wanting to momentarily revert to a state of infancy, the old man put his [cane] in his [mouth].

There will only ever be [one] "[white] album," she said, even if you live to be a hundred.

"A [drop] of [sun] will turn your clothes white. A drop of 1,000 feet will turn your skin white," she said as she continued to list types of [drop]s that will turn things [white].

"A [drop] of honesty in your lover's [eyes] will allow one to see oneself," the priest said. "... according to so-and-so's letter to the Romans of course," he quickly added.

Watching the crone shuffle by with her [cane] every [day], she came to dread the approach of his own olden times.

The space invaders had not counted on the limitless ammunition of earth’s convex defender.

Wanna see concave? I'll show ya concave, the letter C boasted as he happily assumed a state of repose.

Most [days] we toil between [floor] and [ceiling], and so we waste the span of our lives.

The [moon] could not believe the gall of the [sun] for keeping the [floor] to himself, so she cursed him with an infected bladder.

The [sun] rose from the [floor]. "Nightbreak," she whispered. "What?" he said.

The [rice field] dried up once a [month]. A calamity felt in every stomach.

[Ten] half-[day]s levitated above the floor. Something that had not been seen in a generation.

For [nine] whole [days], he thought about drafting a letter of complaint to the director of “Rising Sun.”

Both the [sun] and the impoverished garment workers with their [needle]s, rise early.

With just two [day]s of good [sun] , he thought, his idea of selling swimwear in the winter would be prosperous.

Kiss by kiss, she dropped her [mouth] along his spine.

He returned home to three hungry [mouth]s and thought hard about whether he'd rather kill one, or try harder to sell more goods.

He placed the three [sun] and arrayed them in the shape of a diamond. To the surprise of none, sparkle happened.

Then she took his [mouth] and left it in the sun to dry. After two [day]s, it began to chant.

A [day] passed, then a [month]. But his future never brightened.

[Month] after [month] he refined and honed his online dating profile, hoping to one day, finally, maybe, attract a companion.

Each [day] she administered another injection into her [eye]. She hated it, but life's not worth living without the occasional risk, she thought.

[Five] times she placed her [mouth] upon his own. And each time he thought, how lucky I am! How lucky I am!

He sank into the warrior's pose [ten] times, [mouth]ing the word "combat" each time. Then the old man turned to the assembled crowd and said, "prepare to witness the rewards of a lifetime’s study.”

Fascinated by the four lines of his mother’s mascara brush, he eagerly raised it to his eye, and hoped that father would not come home early.

He'd tried so hard to avoid an ending like something out of Chekhov, and yet here he was, wistfully looking out the window at the rice field, wishing that he hadn't gambled it away.

Actually, she said, at this time of the month I prefer that we sleep back-to-back, with three between us.

And the last thing he heard that day as he flew away from his son falling from the sun, was "old man, we should have taken the stairs!"