I cleared my throat and found my voice then, like a coin suddenly in your pocket that’d been missing when last you looked for it. Ernesto’s - Alexander Chee

Why is it so loud when you cry from grief? Because it must be loud enough for the missing one to hear, though it never can be. Loud enough to scale the sky and the backs of angels, or to fall through the earth to where they rest.

The animal will be tender with you, and you with it, but the animal never forgets that when what it wants for survival requires your death, it will become unafraid to kill you. And so you cannot forget this, either. It is, on reflection, good training to be a courtesan. A woman of any kind.

There is light suddenly everywhere, the light of your life speaking to you. What it tells you is almost the same as what happened.

Never mind that almost isn’t good enough; it’s all you have.