She Was Gone, And All That Was Left Was The Space You'd Grown Around Her, Like A Tree That Grows Around A Fence. For A Long Time, It Remained Hollow. Years, Maybe. And When At Last It Was Filled Again, You Knew That The New Love You Felt For A Woman Would Have Been Impossible Without Alma. If It Weren't For Her, There Would Never Have Been An Empty Space, Or The Need To Fill It.

-Nicole Krauss

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She Was Gone, And All That Was

Nicole Krauss

She Was Gone, And All That Was Left Was The Space You'd Grown Around Her, Like A Tree That Grows Around A Fence. For A Long Time, It Remained Hollow. Years, Maybe. And When At Last It Was Filled Again, You Knew That The New Love You Felt For A Woman Would Have Been Impossible Without Alma. If It Weren't For Her, There Would Never Have Been An Empty Space, Or The Need To Fill It.

Topic

Love You

Years

Space

Only Later Did I Come To Understand That To Be A Mother Is To Be An Illusion. No Matter How Vigilant, In The End A Mother Can't Protect Her Child - Not From Pain, Or Horror, Or The Nightmare Of Violence, From Sealed Trains Moving Rapidly In The Wrong Direction, The Depravity Of Strangers, Trapdoors, Abysses, Fires, Cars In The Rain, From Chance.

Mother

Pain

Children