You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.

I'd come here planning to leave as soon as I could. It was a pit stop, not a destination. I had my whole life mapped out." "So what happened?" "I guess that map didn't turn out to be mine after all.

Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.

The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can't imagine a life without it. They're enlightened.

Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to remember to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning; there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.