I did four pastel drawings from the permanent collection - a Chagall, a Franz Marc, and two Picassos. I picked those because I could tell the paintings were looking at me as hard as I was looking at them.

Self-Portrait: Boy Dives into a Lake of Light

I sneak a glance at Jude. I can tell she's crumpled up in a corner of herself, just like I do in emergencies. There's a crawlspace in me that no one can get to, no matter what. I had no idea she had one too.

"We wish with our hands, that's what we do as artists."

I didn't know you could get buried in your own silence.

Dad puts one hand on either side of the frame, filling the entire doorway, filling the Continental United States. How can I hate him and wish I were more like him at the same time?

Most of the time people look less like you remember when you see them again. Not him. He's shimmering in the air exactly like he's been in my mind. He's a light show.

Forget shutters, if I could put the Great Wall of China around him and me, I would.

My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier.

Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?

Grandma would put up the closed sign for my sewing lessons. At the table in the back of her shop, I'd sit on her lap and breathe in her flowery scent while learning to cut and drape and stitch. "Everyone gets a one-and-only and you're mine," she'd tell me. "Why me?" I'd always ask, and she'd nudge her elbow into my ribs and say something silly like, "Because you have such long toes, of course."

Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to

I understand the quicksand of shame.

"I will bathe in vinegar, down some raw eggs, and start looking for a wasp nest ASAP to put on my head."
"I do not understand this," he says.
"To reverse the leanings of the heart. Ancient family wisdom."
He laughs. "Ah. Very good. In my family, we just suffer."

How can love be such a wrecking ball?

No one tells you how gone gone really is, or how long it lasts.

It's time for second chances. It's time to remake the world.