Eli the Good

by Silas House

But in real life, most all of the extraordinary things happen with no more loudness than a whisper.

Whole scenes of your life can slip away forever if you don’t put them down in ink.

Listening to her, I realized that Nell was maybe the saddest person I had ever known, although she hid it. I thought maybe she was sad for the same reasons as me. Because sometimes, there was too much goodness in the world to bear.

Ultimately reality is far worse and far better than anything that either adult or child can ever dream.

Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those that we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.

“I wouldn’t play with you two if you were the last buttholes on earth.”

Years later I would realize that this was one of the world’s great problems, that people often allow themselves not to think. They choose to not think, and that’s how the whole world gets into trouble.

Longing will eat you up from the inside out.

“But there’s not a tree in the world like the ones you grow up with. You never forget them, and the trees remember you.”

It was better to cry than to suck it up and go around conjuring hate in your heart.

It’s miraculous, the wild places that exist in hiding.