The Burnt Pot
The scorch welded black to the bottom of the pan, the smell that came too late, and the patient soak and scrape that brings it back.
EssayBreaking in the Boots
New leather that doesn't want you, and the slow mutual breaking-in by which a boot and a foot learn to belong to each other.
EssayThe Theology of Blisters
The hot tender spot the shovel or the maul raises before you've noticed—the body's honest receipt for unfamiliar work.
EssayThe Thing That Sank
A corroded green lump raised from a two-thousand-year-old wreck—and the astonishing, half-understood machine found sleeping inside it.
EssayThe Gate Before Dawn
An hour early at a boarding gate before first light, and the strange work of being, for a while, a person whose only purpose is to wait.
Ask the ApostateWhy do we check the door is locked when we already know it's locked?
Knowing isn't the same as having touched it.
Ask the ApostateIs it selfish to want to be left alone?
Solitude isn't taken from the people you love—it's what makes you fit to be among them.
Ask the ApostateHow do you actually get out of your head and into your body?
You can't think your way in; give the hands a real task and the body arrives.
Word, when there is word.