“Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.”

“It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware.”

“Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?” I ask.“We thought he might,” my mother says.“Why didn’t you stop him?”“We didn’t want to take away your choices,” my mother says.“But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising,” I say.“I think he wanted you to find your own way,” my mother says. She smiles. “In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that’s why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it.”

“Something in her is still drowning a little from loss.”

“When you can’t cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.”

“He's in pain. I am, too. It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain we feel.”

“Perhaps it is because now I live in his story. Now I am a part of his, and he of mine, and the part we write sometimes feels like the only part that matters.”