I walk these streets with a shit-eating grin. Vancouver’s clouds of pot, unabashed opulence, marginally insane people arguing with inanimate objects. I adore everything about you. I walk these streets with nowhere to be, breathing deep.
They say do you feel weird, without the boys? and the girl exhumed from the bottle smiles serenely and winks. [...]

I had a dream last night that you and Chris had a baby and moved to Hawaii because you decided you wanted to be oceanographers and you hired me as a live in babysitter. Then eels attacked us in an underwater music slash oxygen tank store.
-From an email received from my awesome cousin

But there comes a time when I have to take a risk. A risk to fail, to win, to live, to love. A time to give up the bullshit story replete with tragedy and pessimism and failure. A time to write a new story with a happy ending. I’m giving it up. For you.
Sizzle, sizzlesays.wordpress.com

With a stillborn baby, you get only one concrete physical image, and it is the image of a corpse. There was beauty, even so: Ames’ perfectly formed feet and long-fingered hands. Still, I could never understand the insistence upon regarding his body a month after death—a time when none of us would be at our [...]

I was cleaning my bookshelf when you tumbled into my lap — when we tumbled into my lap. Me wrapped around you wrapped around me.
-Heather Anne, heatherannehogan.com

…transformed me from a dull, complacent pupa resigned to the false security of a wedding band and suburban dwelling, into a beautiful butterfly queen, determined to walk by my own light, living and loving deliberately…
-Hänni, Hannihaus.com

We’re internet geeks, girly ones, some with babies, some without, most with vaginas, all with hearts. We’re complicated.
-Catherine, Herbadmother.com

It is just the middle, the sole function of which
is merely to bridge that gap between
what has been before and what will be next.
-Schnozz, schnozzfest.com

Nearby, a man looked at me, then at my sister, then back at me. My tear-stained cheeks perplexed him. He didn’t understand how her victory was my victory–her happiness, my happiness. He was not a sister.
-Heather Anne, heatherannehogan.com

You’re naked right now. You’ll be born naked. I assume in your childish glee, you’ll run around naked. And someone will probably mutter under their breath about how your naked body is obscene, indecent and profane. But I will think it’s a miracle.
-Helen Jane, helenjane.com