When I learned of his transgression I threw myself into Dante and Shakespeare, seeking to understand the world that I had failed to see.

When people start acting stupid I usually stop reading. Those people aren’t ready to be characters yet.

Heft of fur and polyester, heft of muscle and blood. Noises commingled, that syncing of bodies real and otherwise.

It might have all begun days or weeks before that morning in early summer when the cigarette and the newspaper vendors at the train station reported that the soldiers were coming home.

That summer we had decided we were past caring.

I updated my socials: “Not tryna go back and forth with you hoes.” I tagged Robert in the post, then put up a pic of me looking bored and captioned, “Stars were born for stages. Y’all have fun rolling round the gravel lot.”

Action and consequence, scene after scene, my father and I will remember everything from this moment on with the sharpness of an alarm that neither of us will ever be able to turn off again.

On the cold night of November 24, 1997, before Shahid disappeared forever, I thought I was his closest friend, his only confidant.

I’ve always loved salmon. Not to eat, as I don’t eat fish, but I’ve always loved salmon in general because salmon jump and no one knows why.

Each birth is not the creation of a soul but the completion of the transmigration from one body to another. There is no such thing as a new soul.