Remember the melting world, burning into frog soup like a lullaby, so slowly we hardly know we are not just falling asleep.

When I woke in the recovery room after surgery, a nurse’s head hovered over mine. “It’s okay,” she said. “I had one too, and now I have three healthy kids.”
And just like that, I gained access to a world of miscarriages.

If upward progress is a romantic idea we try to build our lives around, then so too are falling, celerity, this wild and fickle freedom.

I clenched my teeth, seething at this age-old American innocence, the belief that at the end of the day, Americans meant well and, really, that ought to be enough. Enough to claim the perch of fame, the pedestal of saviors.

FEAR, the most horrible and barbaric fear. It had talons and wings and bore its fangs into each of us. It bled out veins. It was parasitic . . .

There is no accident at the core of this so-called “essay.” Ok, there is, but it’s not what you think.