Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.

People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard.

We have to acknowledge sometimes that this moment is enough. This place is enough. I am enough.

There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you've hung it so careful.

The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there--life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them.

This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day, every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in August when T. Ray left. I go back to that one moment when I stood in the driveway with small rocks and clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the porch. And there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me.

I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.