It's a French technique. Soups get screened, and sauces. Forced through a tamis or a chinois. Everything that comes out is smooth and all the rough parts get left behind, thrown away. I don't want to be screened.

I love it," I say. "So I learned it." It's an explanation that leaves a lot out. But I learned a long time ago that people don't really want explanations.

Everybody struggles with this stuff, you know. With social discomfort and grief and fitting in. People with syndromes, people with disorders, people with diagnoses, and without. People who would be classified as neurotypical. Idiots and geniuses, maids and doctors. Nobody's got it all figured out.

It preoccupies me until it's time to leave. It seems such the right expression of grief. I am sad, so in whatever small way I can, I will tear myself apart. They've taken what's on the inside and made it visible. If I thought it wouldn't be inappropriate I'd do it myself.

I want them to bite into a cookie, and think of me, and smile. Food is love. Food has a power. I knew it in my mind, but now I know it in my heart.

But I can't force everything into the arrangement I'd like. I can't use denial to make everything simple.

This is home, it's the only place I want to be, but at the same time everything familiar feels strange. It's the same as it ever was except without the people who most belong here.

She's not quite making sense, but no one does all the time.

One of my professors in college used to say As the wise man said, Do or do not, there is no try, but the advice columns generally say the opposite. If someone promises to try, and you're happy with that, don't push. It can backfire. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble asking for too much.

Heartbreak is stupid and impossible. Hearts don't break. Hearts squeeze, they wrench, they ache, they shrivel. Hearts pull apart in wet chunks like canned tomatoes.