What does the overlooked heart want?
To be seen.
My mother said I was born in the wrong season, too early, when the almond trees were still bare and the river ran fast and grey with the last of the mountain snow. The midwife did not think I would keep. I was small and loud and would not be warmed, and for three nights she carried me against her own skin and waited for the cold to take me, the way it took the lambs that came before their time.
It did not take me. I have wondered since whether that was a mercy or only a delay. A god once told me that everything mortal is borrowed, and the only question is how long before it is asked back. He said it lightly, as he said most things in those days, as though death were a small debt and not the whole of what we are. He was wrong about very little. He was wrong about that.