We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it

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.

One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.

She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

They learned to hate her unknowability, her untouchability, the collage of her.

She repeats things until they are true, or until she can't tell whether they are true or not. She has become an expert at confusing what is with what was with what should be with what could be.