Wild Dark Shore: A Novel

limerent.

Wollemia nobilis

How did she know all of this? It must have been built in, that’s what I thought. When Orly came along and it was just me, I realized how she’d known. She’d fucking learned. She’d had to, because somebody had to keep the babies alive, and so she bloody well got on with it. And now I was going to have to do the same, except without any backup, and th

What I miss most is not any of the things I expected. It’s having someone to talk to about our children. The hilarious things they say and do, the insights with which they blow my mind and the ways they change frequently and without mercy. I need her to help me process and deliberate and delight in. I want to laugh with her. To be awestruck with he

And though they do this often—he craves the details—it stops me in my tracks because they are always things I’d forgotten and there is something profound about being reminded that they had specific relationships of their own with her.

Exhaustion, I have found, is useful not only for my son’s rage but also for grief. Grief finds power in the strength of my limbs, and if I happen to make it to the end of a day without having completely shattered myself, grief will be fueled by whatever’s left of my energy. It will overcome.

In aisle E, row 34, sits the Taraxacum officinale. Otherwise known as the common dandelion. The dandelion is found all over the world in pretty much any habitat. It’s a survivor. It can grow in lawns or fields, in rocky hillsides or woodlands. It might be the first to sprout up in a new ecosystem, or the longest standing in an old one.

At least we are here, in a place that seems hostile until you look more closely. Until you begin to see its beauty and its tenderness. Until you see the hidden abundance of it.