Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way.

We all laced together—a brothel madam, an English professor, a mute cook, a quadroon cabbie, and me, the girl carrying a bucket of lies and throwing them like confetti.

My art teacher had said that if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. During our standoffs with the NKVD, I learned to do that. I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength there.

Tragedy was a big social event, and everyone wanted in on it.

If I poured all the lies I had told into the Mississippi, the river would rise and flood the city.

Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way.

We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.