"For months it was like that. For months of beginning, touch, distances and what could be done to close them. For months, A listened for voices and tried to sift through for something to promise her that she wasn't like that, wasn't parallel parking on the wrong street. So much commitment she was willing to make, so much she wasn't.

Meanwhile, maps consoled her: New Hampshire, Africa, the thin peninsulas that felt like manageable horizons. What season would her mother call this: Noodle-clouds, certain flurries, the highway smothered or smothering. What skin knew and what it couldn't convey."