Adam Gnade

The most important thing is to survive, to push on every day for the best possible life, to shove and knock and never get satisfied. You work and you fight and you don’t give up. Without life you have death and there’s nothing beyond death. Is there? Maybe there’s more. I’m not sure about this.

I catch the 17 bus and sit in the back with my scarf wrapped up to my chin and my shoulder bag strapped to me and I stare out the window as we drive over the river bridge into Southeast Portland. The riverwalk with its bright-lit restaurants and the winter carnival and its rides, the Ferris wheel turning slow, its ten thousand lightbulbs blazing, blinking on and off, moving in a star pattern toward the center. It’s overwhelming, all of this. It’s so much at once and it’s all so beautiful and you want everything you can get but you can only have a very small piece. A small piece, then nothing.

Or what? Is there something else beyond this?

(Excerpt from The Growling Mouth novella by Adam Gnade. Available for $6 here.)