There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

Marina sighs. "Love's a tidal wave," she says. "Because it sweeps you off your feet?" I ask. "No. Because it sucks you under and you drown.

If he says jump, she doesn't even ask "How high?" She goes out and buys a pogo stick.

At home I was raped by a guy i thought I loved' Trixie said, because thats what it was to her and always would be.

People change, but only if you give them room to do it.

Bad is not an absolute, but a relative term. Ask the robber who used the cash he stole to feed his infant; the rapist who was sexually abused as a child; the kidnapper who truly believed he was saving a life. And just because you break the law doesn't mean you have intentionally crossed the line into evil. Sometimes the line creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're standing on the other side.