I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a real blog post for a while now, but the blog post I thought I would write yesterday is probably different than the one I’ll actually end up writing today, food poisoning and all (ick).

I’m always fighting between the impulse to keep work to myself, where it’s safe and only mine, and the very real, sometimes achingly urgent desire to share it with others.

I’ve been working on a couple of new stories. The one that feels most exciting to me is about running away from home, or maybe just about running.

I was thinking the other day that I often write about the aftermath. The Thing happened, and now you live, to quote Coleman Barks, “in the wake of a new life.” You are stumbling through the wreckage, trying to assemble pieces of yourself.

(And here, a friend reminded me that what is grief but the aftermath of loss?)

Part of the interesting part of writing, to me, is figuring out what that Thing even was. What was the hit that caused the pain? Can you reconstruct the blast by the shape of its crater?

Jisoo feels like that kind of wreckage. Soft and fragile and sharp. Cringing and traumatized, loved and hurting and willing to hurt others.

Or else maybe the hurt is accidental.

I am still looking for the incident that made a hole of this size.