Holly

“Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them. —ROSCOE AVANGER, Sweet Mallow”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds

“Everybody exists. What a miracle!”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Color was a false distinction, love was not.”
― Dorothy West, The Wedding: A Novel

“There was a final day my siblings and I all spent under the same roof, and I didn't even realize it.

Perhaps we would have celebrated it better. We could have taken pictures together to preserve the memory. Maybe we could have hugged each other. Some sort of touch at least.

Alas, we did not. There were wedding preparations to be done and clothes to be packed and new homes to be moved into. Our goodbyes must have gotten lost in the hustle and bustle of it all, but maybe this was the best way it could have happened.

Imagine if we had slowed down that day. Imagine we had acknowledged the gravity of that situation, that this was our last day together and life was changing, and we were walking into the unknown. Imagine we came to the realization that the person we saw every single day, we would now see every few weeks or months or years.

Who can move on from a realization like that?”
― Harman Kaur, Call Me Home: Poems