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It has been said that nature does not know extinction. In effect, it knows only change: nothing ever truly disappears, for there is always something—some part, some particle, some formidable semblance—left behind. You can boil water into vapor, but it hasn’t disappeared. Curiosity killed the cat, but condensation brought it back.
Forms evolve and devolve but things always are. There exists no creation and, consequently, no destruction—there exists only transformation. It is a collision of electrons and positrons, this life: the transformation of matter to rays of light, of molecular currents, of water to vapor to water again.
Across the front yard, the naked trees seemed to undulate almost imperceptibly like living things. Beyond the trees, the moon was a luminescent skull behind black wisps of clouds.
It has been said that nature does not know extinction—that once you’ve existed, all parts of you, whether they’ve dispersed or remained together, will always be
A troubled canyon had formed between the remaining members of the Glasgow family, the distance too great to fill by the time we became aware of its presence.
My guilt was a pool in which I was drowning … though to suggest I was drowning elicits visuals of flailing arms and shouts of help. That was not me. I drowned in my grief with grotesque acceptance, like the captain of a ship who sinks with obligation to the ocean floor, tethered through sacrifice and commitment to the ship that drags him down.
Truth was, my legs had surrendered to the strength of my horror; I could no more trust them to hold me up than I could trust the legs of a scarecrow.
When you withdraw from the world, you find that the world withdraws from you, too.
When you withdraw from the world, you find that you were never really there—that you were never really in the world—because nature does not know extinction, and if you no longer exist, that must mean you never existed in the first place.
It is fair to say both those boys died that night. I will; I will say it. I am a testament to that. The walking dead.
“I know what it’s like to sit awake at night thinking the thoughts of a haunted man.”
“Quite often fiction is the best reality; cruelties are so much easier to swallow when they’re dressed up and capering about like circus clowns.”
“Death is the disturbance. People are just passing road signs along the way.
Althea’s story of the ghost girl did not so much frighten me as it caused a hot serpent of misunderstanding to coil at the base of my guts.
Because he is my brother, I will suffer a thousand deaths to vindicate his.
We were a speck on the landscape of the world. Can you see us? A glittering scuttle across this charted topography, reflecting great bursts of silvery sunlight and emitting exhaust, trundling the curves and slaloms and straightaways as if we were the only significant thing for miles and miles.
