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Mothersexpand_moreIn the Nablus apartment she remembers rolling hills of citrus.
The everlasting shines through in the threshold between worlds.
“Your mother’s fine,” Giuseppe said. “We’re all completely fine.”
Before April rings the chime, she forces her way up out of herself.
The attendant instructs remember, immerse three times.
Fletcher was a squad leader. He ought to be able to get a girl.
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Of all she taught me I like best the lore of spray-on cologne.
Her body had become a scale, a device for measuring grief.
Mild nights would have us out of doors—at their opening I am rapt.
Sometimes you weren’t a good daughter, the mother says.
Cheer and cheer and cheer she sings a song on nesting wings.
With a world full of foolishly dangerous men, what’s a mother to do?
Most people come to Africa because they are drawn to its misery.
As our friendship declined into torture, the prairie grew hotter.
She wags her index finger so furiously that I’m certain it will snap off.
She’s coming back, her arms full of the flowers I gave her once a year.
Elinor had loved a man. The journey’s purpose was that she might forget.
Men can’t sense like that. Or won’t. Even a father don’t dare get that close.
What were the unsafe things to say even in a thirty-year marriage?
I keep dripping milk until I’m sitting in a pool of it, sticky, white. I can’t move.
She was so happy they were going to save her from the city of Dallas.
It is not surprising that her solo marathon did not turn out as planned.
She rocks quickly from side to side, proud, lifting herself higher.
On a scale of 1 to 10, the pain dissolves like a Eucharist wafer.
Try never to repeat rhymes, not once in an entire show. It tires the ear.
Love’s not all that fun, but it saves you. And you should be saved.
I’ve read this novel at various stages of my life and I feel as if I know Isabel.