“Widow’s First Year,” Joyce Carol Oates

I kept myself alive.

Attributed to Hemmingway
For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.
“Asthma Attack,” Etgar Keret
When you're having an asthma attack, you don't have any breath. When you don't have any breath, it's hard to
speak. You're limited by the amount of air you can spend from your lungs. That's not much, something between
three to six words. It gives the word a meaning. You're searching through the piles of words in your head,
picking the most important ones. And they have a cost. It's not like the healthy people that take out every word
that has accumulated in their head like garbage. When someone, while having an asthma attack, says "I love
you" or "I really love you", there's a difference. A word difference. And a word is a lot, because that word could
have been "sit", "Ventolin" or even "ambulance".

“The Child,” Lydia Davis

She is bending over her child. She can’t leave her. The child is laid out in state on a table. She wants to take one
more photograph of the child, probably the last. In life, the child would never sit still for a photograph. She says
to herself, “I’m going to get the camera,” as if saying to the child, “Don’t move.”