I just can’t imagine being older than 22. I’ve no experience at it. I know it’s not 1926. I just need it to be.

You’d think, at a certain point, all these atypical somethings would amount to a typical something.

When my son was born healthy, I never asked why. Why was I so lucky? What did I do to deserve this perfect child? This perfect life? But when he got sick, you can bet I asked why, I demanded to know why. Why was this happening?

My name is Leonard Lowe. It has been explained to me that I’ve been away for quite some time. I’m back.

His gaze from staring through the bars has grown so weary, that it can take in nothing more. For him, it is as though there were a thousand bars and behind the thousand bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, his powerful strides are like a ritual dance around a center, where a great will stands paralyzed. At times, the curtains of the eye lift without a sound and a shape enters, slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders, reaches the heart, and dies.