The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you—and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing. That isn’t of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille.

“A faint recollection stirred, but it would not emerge. It was like standing in front of a locked door, with the memory making a racket inside, while both the memory and I searched for the keys.”

“They teeter on the edges of here and there, and even the living can find their way into those in-between places, if they get lost enough, if they need it badly enough.”

I’m afraid wherever I walk, it’s purgatory.