I foresaw my life unfolding as an interminable stretch of nothingness and so I spent my years on Tinos floundering, feeling like a stand-in for myself, a proxy, as though my real self resided elsewhere, waiting to unite someday with this dimmer, more hollow self. I felt marooned. An exile in my own home

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything

I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become.

Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.

I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things.