R. O. Kwon

Intact families sat in the blue wash of television light, tranquil, like drowned statues.

I ate pain. I swilled tears. If I could take enough in, I'd have no space left to fit my own.

People with no experience of God tend to think that leaving the faith would be a liberation, a flight from guilt, rules, but what I couldn't forget was the joy I'd known, loving Him.

I believe that we, in the attempt to live, invented Him. But if I could, I'd ask Him to give you everything.

It had rained his first day out of the gulag, the lines slanting like marionette strings.

Light spilled through closed eyelids, and I was turning into gold.