Sublime

edict,

(What about Hannah? They set up her nursery in the bedroom in the attic, where things that were not wanted were kept, and even when she got older, now and then each of them would forget, fleetingly, that she existed—as when Marilyn, laying four plates for dinner one night, did not realize her omission until Hannah reached the table. Hannah, as if s

Instead, I, I . . . I encourage her to speak of her past. Rather than address her, I allow her to speak to me. I provide her with a final audience to her life’s lonely narrative.’

The chasm between the girl Mama had been raised to be and the woman she had become seemed impossible to cross.

where the sky will cover me with her rough, grey hand.

Time no longer seemed to tread past in measured steps, but flung forward and back.

Sometimes, in the company of suffering, Nance felt things. Maggie had called it an inward seeing. The knowledge.

prayed to exclusionary Gods

superfluous.