I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.

In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.

As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.

I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.

It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.

And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.