On cruel things.

Death comes for someone it shouldn’t have. How is it not a mistake? It’s the kind of stuff that makes everything else feel like a waste. Suddenly, the idea that, like, an email could be urgent is revealed for the farce it always was. You want to grab everyone you see by the shoulders, shake them and yell, DO YOU KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU ARE?

I left work halfway through the day. The bus wasn’t coming for a while, so I walked up Magazine Street and tried my best to feel grateful for the sunshine, the time.

Later that night, home alone except for my sleeping son, I still felt restless. I found myself on the floor, on my knees, scrubbing. Throwing things gone rotten away.

I took apart the shelves to get at the grime underneath—some were still taped in spots, left on from the factory, untouched in all the years we’ve been here. What is there to be done, I thought, standing in front of the open fridge door. A place in this world where I could restore order. Not nearly enough. But for a little while, it got my mind off things.