Excerpt from "Love and Other Aquatic Creatures"

I sat in that cottage for hours, on the hard bed in the sparse room with only a picture of the Outer Banks, a long empty coastline that looks like the tail end of nowhere. Looking out at the creek, I studied every eddy, every rush and wash of water, spilling over the creek as it eventually did flood. The process was not unlike watching my own life come unglued from a distant vantage point, watching it slide off out of its container, like the love that came from her that caused me to drive way, like it always did.