The Three Lives of Cate Kay

by Kate Fagan

Humans: we built the Pyramids and made all the world’s information instantly accessible, but apparently if we stand together quietly, we’ll short-circuit and melt.

What many people don’t understand about serious injury or illness is that what you’re really coming to grips with isn’t the physical limitations (although there is that); it’s how the physical limitations alter your interactions with the world.

Love didn’t always mean staying.

“The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there. Took me a long time to see that.”

Broken things are beautiful. More beautiful in the end than perfect things, which are usually an illusion of some sort. I hoped I had given her a beautiful life.

“I’d tell her that only love will fill the black hole—that it’s the only thing worth chasing.”