Karenina

I was born in September at the breaking point between summer and fall, that time of year when life decelerates and the things that used to grow begin their slow decay. My earliest memories are of mother, romantically filtered through the lens of a Polaroid camera. In my mind they're just images, exposed to too much sunlight and therefore unrealistically pallid. None of it really happened, at least not to us.

Henry sits by the window in the kitchen, the color of the sky turns from celeste to navy to black as I watch him in rigid silence. I ask him what he thinks it means to be happy, if he still remembers what it felt like.

Seasons shift outside, the weight of this world seems unbearable and never in my life have I felt so desperately sad. Happiness, he says, is a fairy tale and it breaks as easily as a butterfly's wings.