I read somewhere that sounds don’t stop, they keep going all the way into deep space, reflecting off whatever might be in the way and speeding infinitely on. My head feels like deep space, and those voices haven’t even begun to wind down in there.
Only now can I finally see how this had been our pact all along. We’d decided between us, somewhere along the way, and without any real discussion, that my mother would be the flower and I would be the wax paper.
Everyone, even the most tell-all writer, withholds something in the interests of protecting herself or others, but my interest in my own stories has always been to use them to illustrate larger stories about the culture . . .