Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.

A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.

Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm. A tingle arched across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and my body spilled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next.

Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.

Guard the portals of your mind.

Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart.

I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me.