You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

The truth won’t count if she has to wrestle it away from him; it will only count if he hands it to her.

How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us.

because they were sad and beautiful and so were we. I

parents are not wise oracles—they’re just people trying to shepherd other people through the world. We

Everything we learn, we learn from someone who is imperfect.

Thank you for the pain you caused me, because that pain woke me up. It hurt enough to make me change.

How will my children feel if they think that being seen as a mother wasn’t enough for me?

The things we call “life-changing” are and aren’t.

inside the blue part of a flame,

I’m trying to show you my hands, even when my hands are burning.

there’s a better way to keep time, I don’t know it.

I’ve been thinking that I’ve become a student of my own pain, my own grief and suffering.

I could say you don’t get to crush a child’s legs and then praise them for how still they can sit.

The nost in nostalgia means “homecoming”; the algia means “pain.”