The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of thier bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus.
After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.
The living deserve attention, too.
I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn’t want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn’t want to look at me anymore, either.
And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.
There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart opening and closing with the rapidity of stops on an instrument, the quiet felt closures, the ghostly fingering, practice and practice and then, incredibly, sound and melody and warmth.
The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.
These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. ‘Inside, inside,’ she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell...
Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go.
So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone’s hand and not have to say anything.
As if in the other side of his kiss there could ve a new life.
The sun came through the branches of the tree above her, and Ruth looked up past them. “I think she listens,” she said, too softly to be heard.
I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon.
He had been my almost. My might-have-been. I was afraid of what I wanted most – His kiss. Still, I collected kiss stories. -Susie Salmon.
The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. What we see is an almost moon or not-quite moon. The rest is hiding just out of view, but there’s only one moon, so we follow it in the sky. We plan our lives based on its rhythms and tides.
I left my mark on that man.
The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This intimacy – the words on the page being sent back and forth from engaged editor to open author – is unique in my experience.
I have always felt extremely weird. But I am very happy with my weirdnesses, and I want other people to be very happy with theirs.
I think you only learn what kind of personality you have by committing to things.
Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions.