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Mothersexpand_moreI’ve read this novel at various stages of my life and I feel as if I know Isabel.
It suddenly seemed to her that the world was filled with little miracles. There were moments when love overcame her despair.
The baby won’t sleep until 2 a.m., not until he poops and throws up.
The notes must be crying inside me falling from their proper octaves.
Ten years ago, when I was in college, my father divorced my mother and said he wanted me to become responsible for her. That is why I fled to Italy.
i stored away in my mama’s empty perfume bottles smells and stories
Your jumps are numbered. It is better to be a bird without altitude.
That summer we moved to the house you would die in years later.
It’s true, I killed my husband. I had my reasons. He was a hunter on the trail.
The Village wasn’t really a village. No walnut trees. Just cut flowers.
If party isn’t what we set out to do then you should go home.
Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house.
She wants something red and shiny that always works.
Dance with you? I said after a moment. That’s your dare?
A man drunk on the damage he made to a boy’s young mouth.
In its shadow, our mislaid secrets cascade down around us.
She was gone then, inaudible, steeple-reticent, demure as sky.
There is a lot about others I don’t remember, outliving an interest.
I understood that life could end without warning, even young lives.
Not long after Christmas, the smoke really hit Melbourne.
“Jesus Christ,” Dad said, after the counselor spelled it out for him.
I remember a field too long as the stem of a pear chosen in Upstate.
The woman who raised the woman who raised me was a mistress.
Our neighbors the Bells are watching, watching us when we play outside.
Eight years, and she was ready to call it quits. They were both ready.
Mom often went to work on her days off. The library was her refuge.
It could be our baby. Her eyebrow, its perfect arc, the pale blue vein.
Even in death, my mother had to make things difficult for me.
My daughter swallows arrows of sunlight on her way to the grave.
