I took in a breath. "What's the one thing you'd do," I asked. "if you could do anything?" Pass," he said. For a second I was sure I'd heard wrong. "What?" He cleared his throat. "I said, I pass." Why?" He turned his head and looked at me. "Because." Because why?" Because I just do.

I find that the more I depend on real life, the less interesting the story is. It's much more common for me to take something that almost-happened, or I wish had happened, and then follow that possibility.

call it crazy, or just chicken salad. But within reason, or without it i was in it too.

I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.

The lizard stared up at us, and we stared back, taking each other in. He was little and defenseless, I felt sorry for him already. This was a screwed-up place he'd just come into. But he didn't have to know that. Not yet, anyway. There in that room, where it was hot and cramped, the world probably still seemed small enough to manage.

How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.