everything inside me suddenly shifted. My mind broke away from the rest of me. I was looking at myself from above. I noticed, quite calmly, that my body was crying, but the tears belonged to someone else. I was no longer connected to this vulnerable, pink skin. I had been removed from its pains and its problems, and now I was floating outside time, plucked from the carcass that had carried me for so long. I felt like a tiny diamond loosened from the earth. Safe. Precious. Unencumbered. For a moment I wondered if I was dying. Maybe I had gotten caught in the limbo between living and dead, but
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