e.g., Everything I knew of love was built on this crooked foundation. In our lives, we must hold two truths at the same time. And the same way I must hold the stinging and the eruptions, I must hold something else: a sweet memory of my mother.

We were in the kitchen. I was ten years old. Her favorite song, an Elton John song, came on the radio. She was heating up dinner in the microwave, the Salisbury steaks scenting the air.

When my mother was young, she would listen to Elton John on her record player, endlessly. She’d wear out Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. There in the kitchen, when the song came on, she got young again. She couldn’t see herself like I could see her then, how bright she became. She pressed a hand over her heart in the kitchen and began to sway. She sang the chorus, she sang AhhhhAhhhhhAhhhh and it was beautiful to watch because she loved to belt that note so much, she sang it with beauty and with pain, all of the pain of her life coming out of her mouth in that note, she transcended herself and became the note, and I loved her most then, when she was that note, swinging, swaying, electric.