Dissolution: A Novel

by Nicholas Binge

“It occurs to me that at some point, you pick up your child for the very last time. And you don’t know. At the time, you don’t know that it’s the last time you’ll ever do it.”

Endings don’t announce themselves. They sneak around you; they shuffle their way past unnoticed until, on some cloudy day, you look out on an empty street and realize everything ended some time ago.

That is not where I came from. It can’t be. I won’t let it be.

When people depict loneliness, they tend to show the isolation, the claustrophobia of it—someone curled up in a dark room, stuck in bed, unable to move. But real loneliness is repetition: doing the same routines day in and day out with nothing new to reflect on or look forward to.

It doesn’t matter how well you play the game if the other player gets to set up the board.

The longer time goes on, the more people remember what they want to remember—the version that helps confirm the feelings they still feel.