A Sentence About a Sentence I Love, by Zoe Zolbrod

“I didn’t, couldn’t, catch Sils’s eye—she was standing over with the sopranos—but it didn’t matter, I didn’t have to, because this wasn’t personal, this singing, this light, this was girls, after weeks of rehearsal, celebrating the ethereal work of their voices, the bell-like, birdlike, child-sound they could still make so strongly in unison.”

—Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

I love the way the insistent rhythm of this sentence conveys the cresting wave of childhood and gives import to small-town girlhood sweetness.

Zoe Zolbrod is the author of The Telling and Currency. Her essays have appeared in Salon, The Guardian, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. She’s had numerous short stories and interviews with authors published, too. She lives in Evanston, IL, with her husband and two children.

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