All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

To return to the new place makes it less new, moves it something closer to comfort, to safety.

We’re taught that everything is finite and zero sum, Tig said. Money, food, houses, freedom. Zero sum when it ain’t need to be. The whole thing is that some things multiply. Create feedback loops. Like love and honesty. Like generosity. Creates more of the thing itself.

How was anyone expected to dream loftily about the future when the present ground them down to powder and nothingness?

Nothing is implied here besides the opiate nature of time.

The world we knew has always been half-terrible, made as it is by the powerful, for the powerful. We were crowning a different one. Its birth would not be easy; no birth was.

This is my tragedy and my great good fortune, to be the recipient of this bond, to be kept alive under its crushing warmth and weight, to be given it so freely, so much more than I have ever deserved. The world has ended a thousand times and my name called in each new book of it.