Ten below zero this morning, and my friends' dying little girl has taken a turn for the worse. Nevertheless, the animals in the barn look cheery enough, despite their unheated night. Chickadees mob the feeder. My ninth-grade goofball chortles songs from Rent while brushing his teeth. Year after year, we living creatures manage to overflow with joy, with despair, with joy again. The pleasure of a hot drink on a cold morning. The pleasure of a healthy silly child. And all the while I think of two parents beside a hospital bed, watching their daughter struggle to stay alive.

On the page my words look sentimental, obvious, stale; as art, they perpetuate a tedious aesthetic.

But in the metaphors of real life, hearts do swell, and they do break.