[Book.]

(I know the madness will never leave me, not completely. The memory of snakes is ingrained, in my genes, deeper. Darkness seems to carry itself in my mind, as if — if it were to dissipate, then none of me would be left, as if I were a shadow that had no real component to stretch from. So many times I have imagined that I am a doomed man, a damned man, a forsaken man, a guilty man, a lost man. I may never know what the truth of any of it is, and such is the way of the world. I have accustomed myself to the fierce uncertainty of it all. But there are these side moments, always coming and going like a sparrow were a moment, here and gone: a small, blue hope out the corner of my eye. Just enough to tell me that there is love in the world. Small vials of minding water in a desert of mindlessness.)

Am I still standing here?

[This is the end of Chapter 1, the whole of which you can see here.]