We can only handle so much truth at any given moment, I suppose.
. . .
It was like he used all his compassion on strangers and ran out by the time he came home.
. . .
I am thinking that in some ways it might be easier to live there than here with him. But maybe I can only think that because it is not my life.
. . .
It kind of felt like taking us kids to church was a thing our parents did to make sure we were raised right, and then we got old enough and they figured the job was done.
. . .
I pick up the book of poems from Jun’s stuff and begin reading some of them at random. The language is beautiful, and I imagine Jun sitting at the end of the bed, reading the words aloud and then asking me what I think they mean. Not like how English teachers do, where they basically try to get you to guess what they think it means, but like how I know he would have, like he genuinely wanted to know my thoughts.
. . .
I’m simultaneously bursting with pride at my cousin’s integrity and hating him for his inability to suppress it like the rest of us do with such ease.
. . .
It strikes me that I cannot claim this country’s serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history. To say that any aspect of it is part of me is to say that all of it is part of me.
. . .
His life was defined by his constant drive to do what he thought was right. Mine is defined by everything I don’t do.
. . .
My anger melts. In its place a shared sorrow arrives.
. . .
I wonder at our hidden depths. We all have this same intense ability to love running through us.
. . .
I don’t want to look up. I’m too afraid that overhead I’ll find the darkness uninterrupted.
. . .
If we are to be more than what we have been, there’s so much that we need to say. Salvation through honesty, I guess.
