Everyone Brave is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

Perhaps this was what love was like after all—not the lurch of going over a humpback bridge, and not the incandescence of fireworks, just the quiet understanding that one should take a kind hand when it was offered, before all light was gone from the sky.

Love

Memory retreated to its old boundaries and renounced its incursions into sight. Emotions submitted to the authority she had learned in childhood to exercise over them. Pleasant sensations she allowed their effervescence, dark thoughts she quarantined. Rain drove against the skylights and streamed down the panes in sheets. It was a steady and confident rain from a vast and somber sky that seemed installed for the duration.

Laura

The young see the world that they wish for. The old see the world as it is. You must tell me which you think the more honest.”

Life