The thing that I didn’t understand about grief, for forever, is that it was never reserved for the obvious gaping losses of life. An ever-present thing called grief lives in your house, walks with you as you move, layers on your skin like the sweat of summer. In your sleep, it learns to leave, melting… Read more

In a college textbook I read sterile paragraphs about failing hearts, heavy lungs, dying brains—all the things that deliver their poison quietly. In the state prison the ceiling is cold and there is the metallic taste of a helpless death that no one is going to save you from. Along the route to church, nearly… Read more