Abby Johnson

“You said to trust is not to fill time, but you would like to say to trust is to fill that time with each other. The heart does the same, in the immense darkness of the body, filling with blood, clenching it out, tight as stiff fist with nothing in hand. You fill time, clutching onto it as it leaves you. Clutching after each other in the moments you must separate.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

“I remembered how when I was a child I would slip my cold feet between my mother’s thighs to warm them. How she’d shiver and whisper that she would always suffer to bring me comfort, that that was how you knew someone really loved you. I remembered the boots she’d broken in so that by the time I got them I could go on unbothered, without harm. Now, more than ever, I wished desperately for a way to transfer pain, wished I could prove to my mother just how much I loved her, that I could just crawl into her hospital cot and press my body close enough to absorb her burden.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart