Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li

I do, too? But I didn’t say these words to him. Instead, I told him a story about my high school classmate’s mother. The woman grew up on an island in Indonesia. One day she climbed a coconut tree to pick a coconut for her little sister, and plunged from the tree. She did not die but lost most of her hearing from the accident. Later she became a pianist and taught in a conservatory. You had to shout into her ear for her to hear you. I’d never seen her play piano or teach. It was a mystery to me how she could do either.

eupeptic, liminal, without nouns these adjectives of yours have little concrete