Taking on a lecture titled ‘Why I Write’, Lydia Davis struggles with the why and decides instead to focus on the how. Into the Weeds, a book edited from this lecture, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, started by Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell and administered by Yale University, opens with the initial invitation.

I know people know what death looks like and I knew what it looked like before I saw how my mother wore it but there was no way for me to know what she would look like dead until she had died which feels unfair.

The winter wind hitting your exposed skin feels sore; the two collide to create a fissure on the plain of your neck like brittle land. Your hands are red and swollen, ankles charred from the chill.

When she was a little over seven years old, her mother, Mrs Roy, found a family who could take care of her when Mrs Roy was overwhelmed with running a one-of-a-kind school in Kottayam, in the southern state of Kerala, India. The chosen family lived in a big, airy house. The problem, however, was the “respected” senior who was the patriarch-grandfather.

My grandparents’ house had a large garden which bordered three-quarters of the property. The walls were painted a dark, earth green to blend in with all the plants, trees, and flower bushes they had planted and tended to over the years.