Serena

by Ron Rash

what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting.

He suspected the workers thought of Serena as beyond gender, the same as they might some phenomenon of nature such as rain or lightning.

Pemberton remembered what Serena had once said about only the present being real. Nothing is but what is now,

It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did.

“I think this is what the end of the world will be like,” McIntyre said,