It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

...a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.

…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.

I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.