The rising tide lifts all the boats.

I'd like to learn how to cook. I've hauled around this big, old, heavy Martha Stewart cookbook in my suitcase to Cape Cod, L.A., Paris. I don't know what possessed me.

In late summer, when sprays of purple loosestrife, goldenrod, and ripening cranberries burst into color along the old road cutting through the Great Marsh of West Barnstable on Cape Cod, the air vibrated with the drumbeat of cicadas, the caws of seagulls and geese.

Oblong stones sink slow and sideways. Shaped by the weight of waves,dutifully vibrating nature’s lunar-bound graces, they wash ashore only for closed palms to forsake them. The cheerful will cherish them, place themon windowsills, or on graves.

Diana, meanwhile, reads every novel she can find that's set on the Cape, and describes for her father the pristine, golden beaches, sand dunes with cranberry bogs and poets' shacks hidden in their declivities. She conjures the taste of briny oysters and butter-drenched lobsters, fried clams eaten with salt water-pruned fingers, ice-cream cones devoured after a day in the sun.

Standing naked on the beach with all of my secrets between my legs, I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself…

I kept waiting for the part where I’d finally know who I was — some flashing, neon moment of relief, but it never came.

I wish on one of the stars for divine orchestration and save the rest of them for all of the other girls in the world who will feel like I do tonight.

I feel like a paper cut just waiting to bleed.

I tried to push my body through his and completely disappear.