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

We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.

I give boring people something to discuss over corn.

But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.

I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.