I grow more and more convinced the truths I know to be mine alone will never attain the status accorded everything obvious, everything taken for granted and therefore unquestionable. The compass points north; it is day on the other side of the earth. Here in the south, wraparound is the name for porches extending from one side of the house to another: a kind of lie of continuity, a careful median from where one might consider interior versus exterior while sitting in a smooth monobloc chair. Once, I too bore lives into the world— the minimum of how many times I was also wounded. How the merest stroke from a night-blooming flower suggests nothing ever dies, or remains unchanged.

