I can’t get my mind off fine arts, the soul of the dead matter in which I received my degree. This realization gives way to a series of symptoms: a stabbing pang in the chest; difficulty eating and drinking; another kind of pain that is slippery rather than stabbing and radiates from its epicenter in my uterus to every extremity of my body like a weighty, ravenous sorrow. It dawns on me that this must be like the pain that follows an abortion, the residual sadness of a life unlived, clinging clawlike to life.
