It was sometime in October; she had long ago lost track of all the days and it really didn’t matter because one was like another and there were no nights to separate them because she never slept any more.

Perhaps, perhaps this would be the one to pull me out of my plunge.

It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch me.

Do we always grind through the present, doomed to throw a gold haze of fond retrospect over the past?

I felt the mask crumple, the great poisonous store of corrosive ashes begin to spew out of my mouth.

Hour by hour, day by day, life becomes possible.

The journey over the bridge had unnerved me. The river water passed me by like an untouched drink. I suspected that even if my mother and brother had not been there I would have made no move to jump.