We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

But we were both thinking of Dash. We were picturing the Milky Way of mother love filling the sky of Dash’s future—galaxies of it, vast and bright and everywhere. So much of it, yes. But so much of it unmappable, unmapped. Unknown.

Up and down, slogging and flying: the alternating rigor and rapture that is the rhythm of sledding.

“I love you too,” I write, and I squeeze my eyes shut to picture her face, paint hearts on her cheeks, sprinkle her with glitter. “I think I might not know the difference between praying and decorating a cupcake,”

The light rain that’s falling stirs up a particular rain-on-the-sidewalk smell I associate with summer. “There’s a word for that,” Belle says when I mention it. “Petrichor. Which would be a great band name, actually.” It really would.

My whole life with the girls is telescoped into this moment—running away, running back. Fly, be free! I want to say. I want to say, Stay with me forever! Come to think of it, these are the two things I want to say to everyone I love most.