The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

by Leslie Jamison

openings in the tent flaps of her privacy.

She moved as if she were breaking a rule by inhabiting her own skin, and didn’t want to get caught.

the flinty crackle of champagne.

I think she meant there was a place drinking can take you where you forget that your body even matters, and we’d both spent time there.

almost every villain has also been a victim.

casting lines to hook the blooded flesh of his stories.

You can reclaim some things once you’re ready; they’ve been waiting for you patiently. But some things are just lost for good.

My sobriety lived there alone for a while, and then it lived there with hers.

At every vista I was struck by the expansive, anonymous beauty of it all, a beauty that didn’t care if you found it beautiful or not, that just unfurled across the miles.