the incarcerated asking us to explain the difference between “misdemeanor” and “felony”; the parents who have lost a child and write hoping that we know of a simple word, like “widow” or “orphan,” that is a placeholder for their pain, some word that will spare them the inevitable and exhausting explication of their loss to a stranger. We don’t just want our words to have meaning, we want them to mean something, and the difference is palpable.
