Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.

She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up into the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke silently on the people below- As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us

If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.