Does anyone have any sorts? I’ve been out since June 25, when my best friend left this world. Donations would be appreciated. Don’t ask if they’d be tax-deductible. He, a tax lawyer, would’ve known that.

Christmas marks six months since he’s been gone. Reality strikes me like accidentally catching a glimpse of oneself in a magnifying mirror, with all the attendant gasping horror, and I want someone else’s glasses to appear on my face so I can retreat behind the blur, even if it means I can’t see crumbs on the kitchen counter or the permanent sadness in my eyes.

I am so out of sorts I don’t even know what to do. I flop down onto the sofa as if I don’t have bones or muscle or the wherewithal or ability to lower myself onto it with anything resembling grace, and stare without blinking, straight ahead without even seeing anything until I focus on my bare feet and consider them alien not just to the species in general but my body in particular, thinking them preternaturally huge and misshapen, neither of which they truly are. I try jostling myself out of it, but fail, and so succumb fully, unwillingly.