53 was. When Adam approached behind her, she flinched. Shuddered, wrapped an animalskin around her shoulders. She’d thought it was God coming to watch her work. Once, she would have shown it to Him proudly, but now she huddled around it, eyes down. Maybe Adam led his boys through a rocky canyon, and one of them made him laugh. And the laugh, a ringing he once knew, echoed around them. Adam dropped his torch, and his child picked it up for him. Handing it back, boy saw man’s hand trembling for the first time. How long does it take you to realize you’re listening for something that isn’t there? At least, not there the way it was before. - I wasn’t alive for 9/11. I have TikTok and AirPods and all the seasons of all the TV shows I could ever want. Quiet is hard to come by and I am complicit, never trying hard enough to find it. But I know how much colder my body feels when I slip out from under my weighted blanket. I know the unreleased tension in my arms when I wish I could have hugged someone a few seconds longer. It’s that sudden ache for something that’s no longer there. It’s the American high school experience. You get to know that one girl you’ve never had classes with before, and she stays home for community college and you scrounge for out-of-state scholarships and you leave. You
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