“Squish Mishka,” he whispered. It was a commandment.
Because squishing is not destruction. Not when you are three. Squishing is the most honest form of love—the need to hold something so tightly that it becomes part of your own pulse. To prove that it is real. To flatten the distance between “me” and “you.” squishing nemo mishka
Later, when Leo slept, his hand still clamped around Nemo’s tail, the fish slowly reinflated. Mishka’s fur fluffed back out, inch by inch. They lay there, misshapen and warm, bearing the invisible fingerprints of a child’s fierce tenderness. “Squish Mishka,” he whispered
Mishka watched from the pillow. She had seen this before. when Leo slept