All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe. Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in. I want an excuse to change my life.

How unbearable it is to desire what another person can deny you.

I did not know how to explain this stubborn love for my parents that I staggered under, iridescent and gigantic and veined with a terrible grief, grief for the ways their lives had been compost for my own.

Some people find it harder to forgive you for not actually being wrong,