On "The Ways You Are Gone" by Kami Westhoff (3804 words) ***

Somewhere in the middle of this story we get the rundown of a life that could have been--all of it within a week. It's poetry. The life that could have been is fairly mundane, something out of an Updike novel, and yet--for someone who has gone through an incredibly emotional experience that will never actually end--it's also the stuff of dreams. How many of our dreams really are simply a simple life? Read that potential life here at Carve Magazine.