For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.

She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn't.

I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow...I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.

A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.

I believe that the people who survive a cataclysm, rather than those who stand by and analyze it, are nearly always the more credible witnesses to their own history.

Arguments could fill a marriage like water, running through everything, always, with no taste or color but lots of noise.

Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.