Other Birds

by Sarah Addison Allen

food is love. It was the first, and best, magic I ever knew.

Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them. —ROSCOE AVANGER, Sweet Mallow

had taken him all his life to understand this, but even unlikable things have worth. It was how, after all, he’d learned to live with himself.

She was young enough to think that drama was something you had to run toward. She had no idea that drama doesn’t need to be chased. It knows exactly where you live.

Once you accumulate enough regrets in life, they cease to hurt you. They are simply one more thing you collect, like age spots or ugly figurines. You barely even see them anymore. As

But now she wondered if finding out the truth behind some stories would constitute an even greater loss, because it meant losing something you were happy believing.

You can’t un-know

“If the people around you don’t love you just as you are, find new people. They’re out there.”

We all want to think we’re worth the trouble.

Children, don’t hold on to old love so hard you forget to live. Old love isn’t the only love you’ll ever have. And I can tell you from this side that it never really goes away, anyway. So let go. Whatever you’re holding on to, let go.

When I was younger, food was all about trying to fill an emotional void. But she taught me food was really about storytelling. It was about creating something good, and then giving it away.”

I can’t hold on to the past and grab for the future at the same time. I have to choose. Eventually, we all have to choose.”