I could tell that Mom was dreaming, but I didn't want to know what she was dreaming about, because I had enough of my own nightmares, and if she had been dreaming something happy, I would have been angry at her for dreaming something happy.

People who care about animals tend to care about people. They don't care about animals to the exclusion of people. Caring is not a finite resource and, even more than that, it's like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.

As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad’s last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known.

Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.

I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain.