Black Rabbit Hall

by Eve Chase

Jump too wide, it’s all over. I wouldn’t do it. But it occurs to me that I like the fact I could.

in the vast pink sky, where the sun and moon hang like a question and an answer.

Being young and in love and in a car in the rain.

He doesn’t internalize things, like she does, or make obstacles symbolic of other stuff.

She loved being engaged, that state of blissful suspension: they belonged to each other, but they still woke up every morning and chose to be together.

death was a reminder not to wait. Not to put things on hold or forget that a black date is circled on everyone’s calendar, flipping ever closer.

And I feel like both her confidante and her baby, and that I could stay here forever,

There is something brave about this, the attempt to be normal.

I don’t think there can be a worse sound in the world than your father crying.

There is something about funerals that is all the same, like weddings in reverse.

“The funny thing is one assumes life is linear,”

“But then, as you get older, as ancient as me, Lorna, you realize life is not linear at all but circular, that dying is as hard as being born, that it all returns to the point you think you’d left long, long ago. Like the hands of a clock.”

One of those extraordinary surreal days that pop up unexpectedly in an ordinary life, unrelated to anything that has gone before it or will come after.

It was someone acting being me, I think: I was huddled in a tight ball somewhere else, hands over my head, trying to protect myself from the unendurable sadness that would swoop down without warning, bloodied claws outstretched.

“In time, you will feel better . . .” That’s like promising to someone who has lost their leg, “In time, you will grow another.”

it feels like the beginning of something that hasn’t happened yet.

“Permanent state of existential crisis, I think.”

If you live in the past”—Peggy’s voice cracks a little—“you’re only living half a life.”

will not want this in his life. Who would? A mother to his children, handing down her own weird issues to her kids, I don’t think

Don’t rush into big life decisions when you’re upset or on an empty stomach.”