A Little Hope

by Ethan Joella

How grief comes in shyly, like a new season. How grief is something else before it is grief. She could write about detecting grief.

You never know what can break you. What you can fix, what you can stand up to. You never know what time will do, what will defeat or surprise you. You never know.

“We vote because they can no longer vote. We look at the ocean because they can’t. We think about them when we put up a Christmas tree, and later when we sit there and gaze at the lights. We do all the things they can’t. That is how we love them when they’re gone.”

She’s homesick for something that isn’t anywhere.