White Oleander

I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn’t catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They stopped caring whether or not the baby came. They knew if they didn’t die, they’d be going through it again the next year, and the next. I could understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs.

You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don’t know whether you’re going to jump.

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn’t a guest, you didn’t play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.