My backyard is home to very depressed worms. I keep finding sun-dried worm corpses on my walkway. And not even after a hard rain—as they might be flooded to the topsoil. It’s like they just have had enough of being a worm living underground and wriggle to the surface for that long-elusive moment of warmth before being cooked to death.

I go because I want to be somewhere doing something. I really like trying new things. But more importantly at this time, I’m lugubrious and lonely and I feel hollow all the time. My heart seems to have perpetually taken on the shape of a wrenched gut, and I live with a hoarder.