Anita de Monte Laughs Last

by Xóchitl González

And Isaac did all of this even though he knew it meant me leaving Iowa. That any success I found in New York meant me leaving him, his house, his bed. He helped me because he had ambition for me and my work before I ever did. He helped me because he loved me. Wholly. I didn’t really appreciate what it was that I had. Not then, anyway. God, I should have just stayed there.

this. The problem with being alive, I can tell you now, is that it happens so fast, we don’t have the time to make sense of it in the same way that you can once you’re dead.