Kashmir’s Reviews > A Constellation of Ghosts > Status Update

“…there’s only so much time you will have breath to walk on feet on broken shifting earth.”

“You can you can you see from sea to sea you see that you and me are moving—now I on tree and you and you and you remain on ground my sound within your throat my voice inside your heart, my daughter, we are not apart but we are separate separate separate separate we must be you and me must be from sea to sea you see I see you must know must know, daughter, I must go must go. Must. Go.”

“They don’t tell you illness remakes you into someone else. They want you to be who you were. Doctors. Family. Friends. But you will never be who you were. Don’t spend whatever time you have left trying to return to before. That’s a life lived backwards.”

“When I was in the hospital, you wrote and told me that you would keep my watch wound so time would not run out. I cried when I read that, and I still do, because time runs out, as we think of it, but the ideas, the shared love, and the caring for others guarantee us to be immortal. Time shrinks, but love expands.”

“All her weekend visits to this museum taught her that form shifts but life continues.
This is how she could remarry, my father in her heart, her new husband in her heart. She stretched while I solidified.”

“When we’ve spent two hours in only one room, I realize the challenge of the day. No one can read every plaque in this museum in one afternoon. We are going to have to choose what to see. We will not finish what we start.
Not in this museum. Not in this life.”

“Daughter, you will see what I can see that certificates and documents are meaningful only on the earth and that relationships exist outside of them. Do not bookmark things with date stamps they tell you nothing of what’s between them.”

“Rape was for alleys and alcohol and bars. Rape wasn’t for bedrooms with people you knew. Rape wasn’t for girls with a 4.0 GPA at college, who worked full time, who came from “good” families, who only occasionally fell down the stairs or fell asleep during class. I could have left him, I say to the hunter green door. To A34.”

“It turns out all it takes to leave is to let go.”

“Never time for the good-bye like you read about. Just one day something is there and the next minute it ain’t.”