If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.

But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.

Things would get difficult again. But that was okay too. The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.

You see, we didn't know.

Funny how time heals. Like that bullet in my ribs. It's there, I know it's there, but I can barely feel it at all anymore.

He’s speaking in the tone of voice that everyone uses when they’re about to break you apart. Gentle—kind, even—like they can make the news sound better just by speaking in a lullaby voice.

If singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing.