Saints at the River

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that sorrow could be purified into song the same way a piece of coal is purified into a diamond.

He carries what he feels for people deep inside. Even as a kid he was that way,” Aunt Margaret said. “Your momma knows that.” But I had wondered then as I did now what good love was that couldn’t be expressed.

I listened to time clicking like hooves on pavement. But time isn't something you can rein in. It moves on without pause, taking us with it no matter how much we wish it otherwise.

I knew that Lee would have preferred the newsrooms of fifty year ago, a place where he could have told dirty jokes between drags on his cigarette and sips from whiskey kept in the top desk drawer.

and at that moment her arms and legs she did not even know were flailing cease and she becomes part of the river

can’t watch her die,” he told her. “I just can’t.” He waited on the porch till it was over.