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The Unraveling Ties Of The Universe

When she leaves you, you’ll bleed from your nose in your sleep. This cannot be stopped. The blood will go through the sheets. It will soak deep into the fibers of the mattress, and you will sleep on this forever.

Someday Is Today

My sister’s husband died recently, and sorrow has made her a little girl again. Although she’s thirty-nine, I keep catching glimpses of her little-girl face, the one I know from old photographs and junior-high yearbooks.

She Walked Out The Door

For some people life is effortless, like running as a child with no sense of the world turning beneath our feet. It is not that way for you. You will always be aware of the weight of your footsteps and the force of will required to move forward. Anger keeps you together, a mortar that begins to harden.

Of All The Mothers In The World

We carry in our bodies a whole host of hurts, of lonely nights, of tiny slights and insults, of guilt for the slights and insults we’ve inflicted on others. If you’re single, you carry the added weight, the secret shame, of knowing that you are first in no one’s heart. You walk the earth with billions of other people, and you are first in no one’s heart.

We Will Sing All Six Verses

We pull into the driveway of the house where I grew up, or where I gave it my best shot. It’s cold outside, but it’s the kind of cold you do not recognize until you are back inside. So much of life is understood by comparison.

Sunbeams

We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.

Lewis Thomas

Hold Everything Lightly And Nothing Will Hurt Us

I’m driving north on I-95. The asphalt rushes beneath my tires, and when the speedometer hits eighty, the steering wheel vibrates in my hands, this little sedan protesting. The trees along the interstate burn orange and gold, and the northern half of the East Coast stretches ahead of me. I’m driving north on I-95 in October, which means I feel like someone is dying.