The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

Breaking me, then mending me, over and over—that was my mother.

The body’s reactions to fear are so similar to that of love.

But if people are lonely enough, they don’t care about what’s real and what isn’t.

“In this country, all the people are afraid of death. But death is what we are. It is at the center of things.

I am made with pain, for it, of it.

Love doesn’t die easily. It kicks and fights.

How many times can someone bend before they break forever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.

She did not want to be known, even in death.