writing Suggestions in New Zealand

Unlike all the other pictures, the one of the essay exists unmarked by time or place. It isn’t located anywhere, exactly, but on the page and in my head; I don’t remember the second that I took it, but every time I turn to that picture to reread, I reenact it anyway. I carry it with me as a talisman not of protection, but of uncertainty. Stripped not only of its page numbers but also of the name of the friend who wrote it and its title, it articulates both a question and a terrifying possible answer to that question—an answer that points to my own choices as someone whose two obsessions are the past and guilt over obsessing over the past.