to crack each other open

“He tells me we’ve been put on earth to crack each other open, then to stick around long enough to watch the thing that, having been cracked open, suddenly shines. He says he knows there is only a thin wall between himself and all that shining, but sometimes he forgets how thin the walls is, because somebody came along when he wasn’t looking, and painted the damn thing black. He tells me he has tried three different times, but he just can’t stick with the lithium. Even when he talks about not wanting to use his powers for world domination, even when he uses phrases like ‘dark arts,’ he looks like a little boy who wants more than anything to catch a fish.”

 

[Pam Houston {1962- }, from Contents May Have Shifted]