About the birds

He was amazed, he told me, about the birds – about their complicated calls and the way they fly fast towards each other but never seem to collide. It was the first of a new kind of conversation with him. In all the years of my life until this moment, I was thinking, my father has never talked to me about the birds.

The first evening back

The first evening back, the house was menacing and close, and the sounds and the humidity pressed in through every crack in the building.

When I travel

When I travel, I kept saying, my brain works differently. It stops being able to follow a thought. It watches itself watching or else it gapes.