Abdiel

“Before they were metaphors they were someone’s city. They were a lover’s beach, a weekly market visit, a daily drive home. Before they were victims, before we were victims, we were beloveds. Before you were a survivor, you were someone’s light.”
― Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Water & Salt

“It was the best we could manage regarding the heartbreak of a parent’s visit: that we hadn’t tried hard enough, that our lives felt strange to them and that these days of tourism were all we would ever have together.”
― Aysegül Savas, The Anthropologists

“Migration can be triggered by the angle of sunlight, indicating a change in season, temperature, plant life, and food supply. Female monarchs lay eggs along the route. Every history has more than one thread, each thread a story of division. The journey takes four thousand eight hundred and thirty miles, more than the length of this country. The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous