Walking on the Ceiling

There are many ways of hurting without words. It is silence that shapes us.

Stories are reckless things, blind to everything but their own shape. When you tell a story, you set out to leave so much behind.

It is the stuff of fiction that a single conversation can change the course of a life; that we will return to it again and again, wishing to undo it. Even if we could, so much would remain. There are many ways of hurting, without words. It's silence that shapes us.

In his love for these peculiar places, he was like an anthropologist, or an accountant. i couldn't tell which, because I was never certain what lay beneath M's fascinations. Sometimes I imagined they were a sign of sorrow, a wish to care for and preserve things on the brink of disappearance. Other times, I thought that they were nothing more than a tedious desire to accumulate.

Perhaps I'd felt all along, even when I lived with him, that I was passing the time, that my life hinged on the single moment when I'd learn that my mother was dying. Then I would set everything aside.

I don't think you should try and teach anyone how to talk about their family," I said. "It's arrogant.