“Love and marriage are completely unrelated enterprises. Marriage bears as little resemblance to love as competing in the Olympics does to your afternoon jog.” — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“Loss is a straightforward equation: 2 - 1 = 1. A person is there, then she is not. But a loss is beyond numbers, as well as sadness, and depression, and guilt, and ecstasy, and hope, and nostalgia - all those emotions that experts tell us come along with death. Minus one person equals all of these, in unpredictable combinations.… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share
“She comes to me in snatches - I remember pieces of her laugh, the look she gave when she was upset. Sometimes I sniff the bottle of perfume of hers that I saved, but it doesn't come close to the robustness of her smell. It is her, flattened. This is what it's really like to lose. It is complete and… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share
“Oftentimes I find myself, when we are fighting over the bills, or when he chews his food too loudly or laughs at the wrong… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“If I look long enough at a flower, I can see the color of her cheeks in the stigma.” — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“But as I stood there with those mathematics in hand, the weight of the moment on me, I said nothing. And when I tried to speak, only tears came. The pain was exponential. Because as much as I cried, she could not comfort me, and this fact only multiplied my pain. I realized that this would be life; to figure… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share
“I don't sleep for two night. Instead I am wide awake and tossing. Each day I feel less like the person I was the day before, my body hurtling so fast in one direction that my mind cannot keep pace. I can scarcely remember who I was before my body became like this. I dream in bright, swirling colors. The… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share
“I realized that that was how heartbreak occurred. Your heart wants something, but reality resists it. Death is inert and heavy, and it has no relation to your heart's desires.” — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share
“Yes, there is that dark, terrifying loneliness that scares me, but I am acquainted with fear. If I stay inside it long enough, root… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“Early on I felt I had nothing to offer Dean except my body. He was a full person and I knew that I wasn't… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“This was the paradox: How would I ever heal from losing the person who healed me? The question was so enormous that I could… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“His apartment is on the top floor of a three-story building in King. The landlady is an old Rusian woman who smokes at the… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image
“The pilot came on the loudspeaker to tell us we had been hit by lightning. Despite our fright, no damage had been done to… — Zinzi Clemmons Copy Share Image