When We Collided

by Emery Lord

The natural world makes the finest architects and designers and artists look like silly amateurs.

Then he died, and it turned out my mom relied on him for basic function, too. My mom mostly stays in her bedroom now. Sometimes I wonder if she’s whispering to her heart: Beat. Beat. Beat. To her lungs: In, out. In, out. Like it takes all her time and energy to exist.

But each broken person is different, and there is no right way for everyone. Just a lot of wrong ways.

They don’t feel like siblings because we don’t have anything in common except for half of our genetics. It sounds like a lot. But it isn’t.

Sometimes I can identify facts in my mind, but I can’t feel them.

Cognitively, I recognize my good fortune. But I don’t feel lucky.

But all I can think is that the world seems so pointlessly sad sometimes—so harrowingly, impossibly, uselessly sad.

“Diego kept saying he felt like he should be able to control it. Like, he wanted to reason his way out of it. Because it’s your own mind, right? But of course it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you just need medicine.”

Since January, I’ve been trying to believe that we’ll survive. And here, tonight, is the first time it occurs to me: I think we’ll more than survive. I think we’ll be good. Maybe even great.

Every girl wants to be Dorothy Gale or maybe Glinda. I never wanted to be the tornado.”