Why He Moved to Dorset

-After my wife joined the circus I moved, alone, to Dorset.

-After my wife said that sex with me was as exciting as making love to a napkin holder, I moved (by myself) to Dorset. 

-After my wife took up playing the trumpet and I lost my hearing, I decided it was time to venture out on my own (and I moved to Dorset). 

-After all of my wife’s goodness disappeared, I sat in the kitchen thinking about moving to Dorset and then, I did it. 

-After my wife planted clumps of daffodils knowing how much I hated the colour yellow, I moved to the only gardenless apartment in Dorset. 

-The year my wife took to watching reruns all day in her pjs and barracuda slippers, I reinvented myself in the beautiful county of Dorset.

-After my wife taught the mice in our house to sing, I scurried off to Dorset and never looked back.

-When my wife made friends with a wasp’s nest, I quit my job, adopted a schnauzer, and moved to Dorset. 

-When I told my wife I was moving to Dorset on my own, she sat in the kitchen with a vinegar-colored smile. Good luck, she said.

The Eccentric Sisters of Dorset

They stand near the shuttered windows, snooping on the lives of amorous cows, cosy sheep. Their lashes are mascaraed by tears. “My darling, my virgin,” they whisper. They’ve tasted the history of the heart and have swallowed it whole. They rush in and out of unused chambers in petticoats, singing in hushed tones, or playing Vivaldi and Gabrieli with their lyres. The world may see them as delicate flowers but they know of each other's extensive root systems; they are day lilies, Russian sage, Irises, Compass plants. They jolt from bed on the coldest mornings, run outside to pray to the dying stars. They dream of dancing in each other's habits, braiding and unbraiding each other's hair, huddling as one inside a stolen rabbit coat. "I have captured the castle,” Mother Margarita says one morning for no reason and to no one, wearing a pair of found sunglasses because her halo is too bright.