Saint Joan who knows my wants, my troubles, my self-doubts. You are my mother and my inspiration. Hear my prayers.

The words may be lost, but the brick survives. And the brick may be lost, but the mountain survives. For now.

If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would not be to take a different road, or even to turn back sooner. It would be to waste less time on shame.

At a reading I attended last month, an essayist exploring the nature of holes mentioned that the philosophical term for what surrounds a hole is a host. A hole, of course, cannot exist without its host.

Perhaps I have a faulty circuit in my brain, but suddenly the most urgent thing was to explore, to find an adventure; something that would allow me to ignore the state of my marriage.

I cannot bring myself to make the gesture that happens on television.  That, there, is fiction. This, here, is real.