The Museum of Failures

by Thrity Umrigar

All children believe that the world begins with their birth. But to be an adult was to acknowledge the endless circles of life that began before one’s time and would continue long after, to realize that one’s story was shaped and written by unknown others. His own history had begun so much earlier than his actual story began. Cyrus’s choices, made for reasons he wasn’t alive to defend or rationalize, had bled into his own.