My mom was there, in some form, in some sense, in some universe. My mom was still my mom, even if she only lived in books and door locks and the smell of fried tomatoes and old paper. She lived.

It was crazy how a hearse and a pair of sneakers could cheer a guy up.

Everything about me remembers everything about you

You're so full of crap, you could pass for a toilet.

There was no one color that could paint Lena Duchannes. She was a red sweater and a blue sky, a gray wind and a silver sparrow, a black curl escaping from behind her ear.

red plastic rain her tears stain

Because life goes on, L. The birds do their thing, and the bees do theirs. Seeds get scattered, and everything grows back.