Find Layla

by Meg Elison

Life is hard and complicated and messy. Life is parasites that live in your gut and brilliant scientists teaching a gorilla to use sign language. Life is moths that drink tears, and the flu virus, and nothing you can control. Life is sometimes using a knife to comb your hair, because absolutely nothing else works, and life always finds a way through. I want to tell her what I always tell myself now: that’s life. It cheers me up and it calms me down. It reminds me to focus on what I can do rather than what I can’t.

“It seems like the worst thing that has ever happened, and that nothing will ever get any better, and that you’ll always be what you are right now. That’s all bullshit. It gets better.”

“Just the two of you against the world.” So far the world is winning.