Exposed meant conspicuous, different, not fitting in, not feeling at home, at least not until you learn that your self is your home and no one can take it away.

When you fight to be taken seriously, you don’t smile in photos.

Wind swept dark tatters across a sky rippling with luminous cloud from horizon to horizon like a well-muscled torso, bringing with it the smell of dust and grass and a sweetness she could not identify.

That’s what I wanted from the world, to feel nothing. To feel nothing and not be involved, for everything to stay comfortably outside myself and not get in. How did people survive all this knowledge of suffering in the world? How did they carry it around, day after day, and not go mad?

Older people were immigrants in their own country. They had not been born to the idea of rapid change, not like us.

The world lit up like a silent photograph, flat and grainy, limning the tree stark as a charcoal slash against a parchment sky. Lightning exploded like bluewhite cats-o’-nine-tails until sound rolled and cracked and splintered and Marghe could no longer tell if it was the ground shaking or her muscles; she felt deaf and blind and exposed to her core.

She wondered why modern creations became uglier faster.

The cloud cover was heavy and multilayered, shades of slate blue and silver, pearl and charcoal, like a sketch washed with watercolour.

She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?

Not knowing the right definitions is no different from not having the right tools to fix a burst water pipe.