“On last year’s anniversary, as he’d held me, I’d whispered all the things that set my skin on fire when I thought of him. How that part of me that I had buried and forgotten about was awakened, and she wouldn’t rest. How I wanted us to go deeper, into the corners of our minds that didn’t need to make sense.”

“And for a minute there I think this is the freest I’ve seen my mother in a long time. Smiling. Laughing. Dancing. Giving God all the glory when she throws her hands up in the air and two steps like the movement in her hips had thawed and all life had been blown back into them.”