Sublime

obdurate.

This is an outlandish notion only if you don’t know how a person can destroy you by the simple act of disappearing.

She herself did not seem quite real.

O’Connor’s “Good Country People,”

Strange to think of his voice still flying through the air, already a country away, growing weaker every mile.

And that key, that tiny symbol of her life, suddenly will not cease its bleeding, will not cease to give the cry that something is wrong. A woman may try to hide from the devastations of her life, but the bleeding, the loss of life’s energy, will continue until she recognizes the predator for what it is and contains it.