Jake

“I'm so busy listening to the heart that I don't even hear when somebody asks me to pass the salt.”
― Frederik Pohl, Gateway

“We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments. Our delicate cross-stitch of bickers.

The house becomes a physical encyclopedia of no-longer hers, which shocks and shocks and is the principal difference between our house and a house where illness has worked away. Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying ‘OH NO YOU DON’T COCK-CHEEK’. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.

She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus).

She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm).

And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday.

I will stop finding her hairs.


I will stop hearing her breathing.”
― Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“Only the middle ground of this wicked world mattered, the vast gap that stretched between, and those who were born with enough grit to brave it.”
― David Joy, Where All Light Tends to Go

“How’re you doing, Cap’n?” Amos asked. “You seem a little twitchy.” “Fine,” Jim said. “Just covering near-constant panic with light humor, same as anyone.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Falls