Afloat in a Lonely Sound

I tell her...about the trivial things I took for proof of permanence--the coffee brought to bed in the mornings, the bicycle rides in the afternoons, the ritual games of backgammon after dinner. I tell her how we slept, his hand falling naturally on the back of my thigh, the gravity of that hand as I fell asleep, holding my body with a single touch.

-Brenda Miller, "Needlepoint," Season of the Body

There is a rotten kind of sickness in the center--deep and sunken behind the cleavage point of my ribcage. It is fear in a deadly form, untamed. These things packed tightly together into some semblance of weight have every possibility to be nothing more than "trivial things I took for proof of permanence."

I read this passage sitting in the sand when everything in the world should have felt right. It was like a punch to the gut. Somedays every minute feels that way.

I have no idea where this is going. I have no idea what the eleventh hour holds. And just six weeks ago I had never been more certain of anything...

in all my life.

I am frantic-groping for pieces that once held faith together.