Galveston

by Nic Pizzolatto

her eyes rummaged over things, searching out trinkets.

Certain experiences you can’t survive, and afterward you don’t fully exist, even if you failed to die.

I stammer and mumble through the anecdote, and everybody looks confused when I’m done, but they thank me. It’s obviously one of those stories that no one knows how to take. They can’t understand the point. The point of the story is how she told it, the way her face looked away when talking, glancing back to see if I was listening. The slow, measured quality of her words.