A collection of similes.

The door of the upstairs parlor gaped like a dark mouth. From the study, a bar of dimmed gold light lay across the carpet like a dropped scarf.

That smile: it was like something she had set a match to a long time ago and then left to smolder on by itself. She had a lovely upper lip, prominent, like a baby's, soft-looking and a little swollen, as if she had done a lot of kissing recently, and not kissing babies, either.

When I arrived at Dartmouth College in 1997, my attitude toward alcohol was that it was a delicious and dangerous treat that, when obtained, needed to be ingested quickly in case someone tried to take it away. You know, the way a racoon eats from a garbage can.

She wore a hat, too, a skimpy affair that made it seem as if a small bird had alighted on the side of her hair and settled there happily.

My thoughts had scattered like a flock of baby chicks at a petting zoo.

He had a lazy, easy way of talking, as if every word had been simmered for hours over a low flame.

It's turning out to be a bad day, a day when the sun feels like teeth.

The hope inside my chest crumbled like a dry cracker.

His precious angels stared at him in horror, as if they'd just spotted a giant leech hanging off the tip of his nose.

Reggie knew he was going to fail, could feel himself slipping inexorably toward disaster like a man on a steeply pitched roof.

The song seemed as small and gorgeous as a sixteenth-century Persian miniature.

When you hate a song, the reaction tends to come in spasms. Hearing it can be like having a cockroach crawl up your sleeve: you can't flick it away fast enough.

I travelled from Pike Lake to Saskatoon in a night so dark it felt as if I was submerged in a vat of black oil.

Despite apparent difficulties, poetry seemed to reach the children, to move their imagination, as directly as bright colors or a spring breeze.