When you look into your baby’s eyes,” Lacy said softly, “you see everything you hope they can be…not everything you wish they won’t become.

The reason I am still sitting at Josef's kitchen table is the same reason traffic slows after a car wreck- you want to see the damage; you can't let yourself pass without that mental snapshot. We are drawn to horror even as we recoil from it.

Suddenly, I don't want to be this person anymore. I don't want to pretend I'm fooling the world when I'm not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I'm not doing a very good job myself.

You can stay up all night and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love.

What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.

You okay in there?" "No, I'm hanging from a closet rod.

I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said. My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?