She wraps her arms around herself and stomps her feet to shake the ice from her toes, but it doesn’t work. The girl wonders how far she has walked in the past months.
Sexy Coyote’s performance was a true highlight of the night, and despite a/v issues the band played on, their lead singer/keytarist at one point championing through the seated crowd and giving everyone a chance to punch the keys.
La Llorona, the vengeful ghost, now haunts the waters of drip-brewed beverages, furious that her loyal patrons were unfaithful. And for what? The best hot chocolate in Philly?
If the man he had driven was a ghost, what about the cat? It had vanished once inside the house and never reappeared. He had heard countless stories of wronged spirits lingering among the living, but never a ghost story about a pet.
I have accepted it—to live in forgetfulness of myself, For nothing here tries to remember me. I mean, each time I try to live here, the country calls me by a name, forgetfulness— Our ancestors were never called less of the earth and her world.
Alternating between the voices of expert bricklayers, hurt children, frank parents, and an omniscient third-person narrator who, in italics, ties the collection together, Mortar pushes past discomfort:
, 
