Between Us and Ashes
Her current seven most used words, in order of frequency: *Mama, Dada, Yiya* (her word for Lyra, which she had developed independently of the actual name), *no, more, block, please.
The please had been the most productive addition. It reliably improved outcomes. She was expanding its use.
On a Tuesday in May she made a discovery that consolidated several things she had been assembling. She was in the living room while her parents were in the kitchen, where conversations happened. She could hear the specific quality of their talking — not the content, which she did not yet have enough vocabulary to track fully, but the texture of it. The back and forth. The pauses that were part of the conver
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