"Alma, what is it?"
"It's nothing! Just nothing!" It was so stupid and clumsy, all of this needing and outrage, it was so stupid, it was a failure and a lack inherent in me and the thought that anyone could guess that it existed within me made me cringe and flame with self-loathing.
In my mind I....
        

 

...was, I could be, so
different. With a little warp of time or distance,
another little fold in a protein,
and I would be
who I am.