The Dogs of Babel By Carolyn Parkhurst

The Dogs of Babel
By Carolyn Parkhurst

Those square eggs swept me off my feet

"You remembered who you were. And had you known but yesterday what you know today…”

"Apparently there are two ways of falling, and each one tells a story. A person who jumps from a great height, even as high as seven or eight floors up, can control the way she falls; if she lands on her feet, she may sustain great injuries to her legs and spine, but she may survive. If she doe not survive, then the particular way he bones break, the way her ankles and knees shatter from the stress of the impact, let us know that her jump was intentional. But a person who reaches the top branches of an apple tree, twenty five feet off the ground, and simply loses her footing has no control over how she falls. She may tumble in the air and land on her stomach or her back or her head. She may land with her skin intact and still break every bone and crush every organ insde her. This is how we decide what is and accident and what is not."

"Why did everything have to be so damn hard? There are people, I thought, whose lives are easier than this. There are people who don't have to worry that their tiniest acts of kindness will be met with fury by the ones they love. It was in that moment that I thought, for the first time, about leaving Lexy. For a moment, only for a moment, I saw my life without her and I saw it to be better. Easier. Lighter."

"for most of us, suicide is a moment we'll never choose. It's only people like Lexy,who know they might choose it eventually, who believe they have a choice to make"