Catherine Lacey

If her truest self is invisible and unknowable to others, is she even alive?

IF YOU EVER NEED TO—and I hope you never need to, but a person cannot be sure—if you ever need to sleep, if you are ever so tired that you feel nothing but the animal weight of your bones, and you’re walking along a dark road with no one, and you’re not sure how long you’ve been walking, and you keep looking down at your hands and not recognizing them, and you keep catching a reflection in darkened windows and not recognizing that reflection, and all you know is the desire to sleep, and all you have is no place to sleep, one thing you can do is look for a church.

Sometimes I think I might be writing a letter to sleep, that I might be asking him if he remembers me, if he ever plans on coming back. I’ve received no word from death’s brother. I have not entered a church in some time.

I miss that kind of beginning, being given another day, taking another day, something that’s yours, only yours, only yours and everyone else’s.

For so long I had been a person who needed other people to do things to me, and for so long no one had done the right thing to me

There are some things that only other people can do to you.