Status Updates From The Mothers

Maybe you didn’t know who you would be in the world. Maybe you were a different type person everywhere you lived.

Aubrey wondered if they were the only ones who felt they didn’t know their mothers. Maybe mothers were inherently vast and unknowable.

After a secret’s been told, everyone becomes a prophet.

In a way, subtle racism was worse because it made you feel crazy. You were always left wondering, was that actually racist? Had you just imagined it?

It was strange, learning the contours of another’s loneliness. You could never know it all at once; like stepping inside a dark cave, you felt along the walls, bumped into jagged edges.

Grief was not a line, carrying you infinitely further from loss. You never knew when you would be sling-shot backward into its grip.

In all that living, we have known men. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.

FIRST LINE: We didn’t believe when we first heard because you know how church folk can gossip.