To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.
NoViolet Bulawayo
When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. . . . They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same. . . . Look at them leaving in droves, despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong
