They do not desire anything more than everything they have known.

She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.

Life was a small negative space cut out of the eternal solidity, and for the first time, it felt precious - not like all of the words that had come to mean nothing, but like the last breath of a drowning victim.

She saw through the shell of me into the center of me

My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.

Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.