It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There’s a certain boldness to inaction.

I’d grown up hearing stories about the special hazards that girls faced. I knew where the bodies were found: naked on beaches or cut into pieces, parts frozen in freezers or buried in cement. These...

He’d grown eager to hand off his things, as if the weight of his possessions kept him tethered to this earth, and by giving them away, he could snip those strings.

With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here’s a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly;...

The only thing you have to do in this life is die,” said Mrs. Pinsky…”everything else is a choice.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

We were like wanderers in a desert, blessed with a rare downpour, but unable to store the rain.

But the past is long, and the future is short.

This was the first time I noticed it, the inevitable space between father and man.

I could no longer remember the way my mother’s eyes looked before the slowing. Had they always been so red around the edges? Surely, those pockets of gray beneath her lower lashes were new. She...