“There is an uneasy silence in the pod rac­ing toward sec­tor 22. Onyx and I sit silent­ly next to each oth­er while the south­ern and east­ern periph­eries rush past us. Every now and then I notice his eyes on me. Sud­den­ly, I am a glass house and he can see right through me, into the hol­lows and the attic of my pres­ence, reach­ing beyond my map of myself.…

I see flash­es of her face in front of me, big, daz­ing green eyes and skin cov­ered in debris of pain. “I see only dark­ness, dis­placed in me instead of the night.” She’s my God. She knows of our begin­nings and our aber­ra­tion. She killed her­self so I could live. I might as well try.

I had spent my life won­der­ing whether bro­ken love could be mend­ed when I saw my par­ents drift apart, from secret dances in the moon­lit kitchen to becom­ing strangers, vio­lent­ly and abrupt­ly fight­ing for divorce. Like a glued-up vase. I refused to see it then, but a frac­tured vase still expos­es its porce­lain fragili­ty even after it has been reassem­bled. Even with the finest glue and the hands…