How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

“And you said she was getting better.” “I wanted to believe she would get better,” I said. “Until the very end.”

I lean over the table and kiss him gently on the lips—too long to be friendly, too soft and quiet to be anything more than a little sad. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have met another way.”

My engineer father once told me that marriage and who you fall in love with are largely a matter of chance, chemicals, and how far you’re willing to drive. He said who your kids turn out to be is even more of a crapshoot. I blame some of my failings with human connection on this man.

I remembered her telling us magical stories about how she had a recurring dream of being a baby and someone raising her tiny body into a dark sky and letting her float away into space.