Jude taught me what love was: to be willing to hold on to another person's pain. That's it.

That's how you avoid becoming a moth," he says. "Stop asking others what to believe. Figure it out for yourself.

For years, we had stood on opposite sides of a divide, calling across because we could never jump the distance. This was the moment we discovered that, if we both shifted our weight forward, if we abandoned our fear of the drop below, not looking down, we could touch the tips of our fingers together. And though it wasn't much, in that moment, it was enough.

When I lost my son, I became a citizen of a country I never knew existed.

Jude used to try to make me laugh, and when I'd crack a smile he'd keep the joke going , like breath on an ember, making it grow into a fit of giggles that'd echo around the whole forest and make all the birds in the trees quiet.

I replay the scene again and again, the broken mashed-up face looming over me, the knowledge between the two of us that I'd done it. That act of kindness is still more unfathomable to me than any cruelty.

Growing up, I believed in miracles. I guess I don’t anymore.

You know, when I was little, my dad told me that if I misbehaved, he'd send me to live with a witch who ate children.''Really?'She nods. 'I was so afraid of the witch. Feelings are magnified when you're young, I think, and the fear can stay with you for a long time. I eventually grew out of the fear but even now when I read something with a witch, my mind always traces back to that story. Isn't that weird?''How'd you grow out of it?' I ask. 'The fear?'She takes a long moment to answer. 'I read lots and lots of books about witches.

In that moment, I feel the Prophet's canvas ceiling lift away from my head, walls flying off me, and a pressure I've never put into words hisses somewhere at the back of my mind as the size of the universe assembles itself in my mind. If I close my eyes, I can see it, the endlessness beyond my ears, and knowing I'm only in a corner of that vastness doesn't make me feel tiny. It is amazing that, though I am small and ungifted and barely educated, even I can appreciate the scale of the universe.And from this perch in space, for this moment at least, it seems unimportant whether someone made it, or if it made itself.

Moments like this occurred more and more frequently, and I think that was the biggest difference between us. That we could look at the same stars in the same sky, but not have the same questions. Not want the same answers.