Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?

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.

Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.

Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away (from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves) or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?