Someone slipped a story into my pocket when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t notice it there in the soft dark—it weighed almost nothing, a loose thread, a seed—and I didn’t notice when it crept out of the folds and slithered along the seams until it reached my collar, below my ear. I didn’t notice when it began to murmur; I thought it was my own hidden voice.

For so many years I listened to that story. Its tendrils grew deep and entangled with my nervous system, my organs, my veins. One day a friend noticed I was looking rather drained. “Are you well?” he asked, and I responded—extracting the words with difficulty, because the story was loath to let them go—“No, I do not think I am.”

The excision was slow and painful. The story had become load-bearing, and my insides needed structural repair. Of course fragments remain; they always do. But now I meet my friends more often, to show me what my mirror can’t. Now I check my pockets for uninvited guests.