This Impossible Brightness

by Jessica Bryant Klagmann

Write for yourself, not for someone else, not for an audience. If you truly love to write, if you have to write, you’ll do it even if no one else ever sees it.

The universe on her body expanded. When she wasn’t being tattooed, her body longed for the feeling of the needle pressing into her skin, the high-pitched hum. It brought a new kind of comfort to her, and so she continued asking for more.

I do think funerals are unnecessarily sad in that they exist at all. They’re not really for the dead. Just everyone left behind.”

Earth has stories, but nobody remembers them. It can’t tell the stories on its own, so it’s becoming an echo of itself.”