Only the Beautiful

by Susan Meissner

Why aren’t there places like that for fallen men, I wonder, where they are tsked and told every day that their recklessness has led to disaster?

An amaryllis is always waiting to delight and surprise you, even when your world seems cold and dark.

Who defines what is weakness? I’d wondered. Isn’t it only the strong who get to decide that? Isn’t it only the strong who have the power to act on what they decide? How can that be right or fair or good?

California has been at it since 1910 or so. Maybe a little earlier. Other states were doing it before California, though. I think Indiana was the first.” For a second, I can only stare at George. “You’re saying this was happening to people here, in America, long before the Nazis started doing it in Germany?”

“Eugenics laws?” Lila asks. “I mean legislation that allows states to decide who among the institutionalized with so-called genetic flaws should be made unable to have children.”

I don’t regret the life I’ve led, but I’m acutely aware that if I’d made different choices, my life would have had a far different trajectory, and not only my life but other lives, too. So much would be different at this moment if I had stayed.

These people didn’t like it when a person wasn’t like everyone else. They thought only they knew what was right and good and normal.”

A book is always in many places at once. That is its singular wonder. A book takes one voice speaking and makes it many. A book can shine far brighter and longer than I ever could on my own.