I lean against a steel gurney, cradling him in my arms. I hold him the way I would have, if I’d been allowed to. I whisper his name and pray for his soul. I welcome him into this broken world and, in the same breath, say goodbye.
“I turn toward the jury. “What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they’d be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they’d be taken first at the doctor’s office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up—but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you’d be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal?”
― Small Great Things
― Small Great Things
“Which means if this kid had been born on a Monday instead, he would have had a fighting chance.”
― Small Great Things
― Small Great Things
“We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
“I took classes in anatomy and physiology, in pharmacology and principles of nursing, but I planned my schedule so that I was always home for dinner, to tell my mama about my day. It didn’t matter that my commute to and from the city was two hours each way. I knew that if Mama hadn’t spent thirty years scrubbing the floors at Ms. Mina’s house, I wouldn’t be on that train at all.”
― Small Great Things
― Small Great Things
“On the day before classes were supposed to start, Mama took”
― Small Great Things
― Small Great Things
May’s 2025 Year in Books
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