If Only I Had Told Her

by Laura Nowlin

I can’t stop tearing at the wound, because the wound is all I have left of him.

So this is where I live, in a place where every shade of joy must be painted over in the black of Finny’s death, muted to the gray of willfully existing.

The world’s gonna fuck with your kid no matter what. All you can do is teach ’em to brush their teeth and love themselves.”