Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

They built their tidy houses of self-importance and special blessing and went inside and slammed the door, unaware the mountain behind them was aflame.

Let’s all sing the redneck national anthem: Settle for what you can get.”

But being a stay-at-home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was always and never by herself.

So much human effort went into alteration of nonessential components. Especially for women, it could not be denied.

Some deep and terrible trouble had sent the monarchs to the wrong address,

people played their channels right, they could be spared from disagreement for the length of their natural lives. Finally she got it. The need for so many channels.

that everything else is in motion while God does not move at all. God sits still, perfectly at rest, the silver dollar at the bottom of the well, the question.

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from everything that comes next.

People hang on for dear life to that one, she thought: the fool they are right now.