Swift River

Sometimes when you do someone wrong, it’s too overwhelming to figure out how to fix the hurt, and you end up being the one to leave.

My excitement for tomorrow feels both bright and heavy, like a first chuckle after a long cry.

Grandma Sylvia hated for nice things to stay locked up in trunks, so we used to have fashion shows and put on Irish skits in Irish accents with whatever wasn’t in danger of turning to dust. It was like frolicking with the ancestors.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that families split apart over one thing, but the thing that keeps them apart is something else entirely. Toss in guilt and shame and then the years stack up like bricks in a wall you can’t climb over.

patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Your hometown makes you and breaks you and makes you again.

Sometimes worries are a comfort, what connect you to another person.

Missing you is like a toothache, always right there, sore and buzzing under everything, even when happy things happen. Every now and again the pain stings so sharp make me jump up and howl. It don’t ever get better, I just get used to it.

Then I grow up and know it’s the opposite—they don’t see me at all. I’m an empty bucket to pour themselves into. They can talk into the deep black well of me and their secrets will never come out.

Toss in guilt and shame and then the years stack up like bricks in a wall you can’t climb over.

wouldn’t want you to do it, either.” She looks at me wild-eyed, like she’s in a fight for her life and all she can find is a shoe to throw.

They seem so alone together. At the beginning of so much alone together.

I don’t think her new body will ever earn her a new name in this town,

It was where Ma had grown up, where her own Ma had been raised, and her mother before that. “These are your roots.” I pictured all of those women holding my ankles so I wouldn’t float away.

secrets can have so much power, over time you start to protect them like they’re family. When you lose them it’s like somebody died. You start to love your secrets more than you love people,