The Smell of Other People's Houses

We don't have to be blood to be family.

Sometimes you can be inserted into another person's life just by witnessing something you were never really supposed to be a part of.

It's still there- my own heart, cobbled together and a little worse for wear- but it's definitely not all beat out.

It suddenly dawns on me that there is a big difference between feeling tired and being weak.

Catholics are pretty good at keeping Jesus nailed to that cross, rather than focusing more on that happy bit where he rose from the dead and freed us from sin and evil.

Even after your heart breaks into a million pieces and your baby is gone, I am here to tell you- all around you the world will still go on spinning.

Did I stop believing in everything all at once, or was it so gradual I just didn't notice?

I'll never understand how certain things that happen to us can climb under our skin and make us someone new. Big things can do it — like Sam going missing. Small things can do it, too, like having a stranger fall to pieces in front of you. I'm beginning to think that everything changes us to some extent.

I hope she’s never smiled at anyone like that before.

Dad?" But he's still looking out the window, not at me. I walk over and lean my head against his shoulder. His green raincoat is wet and smooth and stinky, like an orca's nose. He smells of salt and wind and more love for me that I probably deserve. He pats my hair and, as if he's talking to the ocean, says, "You should have just asked.

She must have decided before she was even three days old that she was going to fall in love with her life.

Take this because sometimes you just have to hold on to whatever you can.

It reminds me of when George gave me a doughnut that day at the Salvation Army and how strangers have been kinder to me than my own family. Suddenly I feel like the loneliest person in the world.

Sometimes Daddy would bring me a still-warm deer heart in a bowl and let me touch it with my fingers. I would put my lips to it and kiss its smooth, pink flesh, hoping to feel it beating, but it was all beat out. Mama would call him Daniel Boone as she laughed into his bare neck and he twirled his bloody fingers through her hair and they danced around the kitchen. Mama was the kind of person who put wildflowers in whiskey bottles. Lupine and foxglove in the kitchen, lilacs in the bathroom. She smelled like marshy muskeg after a hard rain, and even with blood in her hair, she was beautiful.

Did you save him?” “I tried,” I say. “Maybe he saved me?” “Yeah, that’s what we do, isn’t it?” Jack says. “We save each other.

It has ruined the smell of blueberries for me, probably forever. Because isn’t that how forever happens—instantly? One minute your best friend is right there, and then suddenly she’s not.

He always sees the gossamer threads floating invisibly between people.

She smiles as if the memory is a peppermint stick and she's licking it, slowly savouring every bit.

There's one smell that totally catches me off guard. It's the smell of worlds colliding.