I DECIDED TO leave the desert the next afternoon. When I finally arrived home, there was no catalogue of our shared life sitting there. Just a thin manila envelope with a double-sided sheet of paper inside, stamped by a clerk who made the dissolution of our marriage official. It was crinkled and puckered, as if a legal assistant had accidentally spilled water on it during her lunch break. A smear of yellow rimmed the top corner. I examined it, wondered if it was mustard, and realized that, for whoever it was who shoved this piece of paper in an envelope, my divorce paperwork was just another task, an obstacle keeping them from ending their day.

31.

I had turned my phone off while in the cabin and felt oddly dislocated when I got home. I only had one voice mail, from my mother. She wanted to talk about what we were going to do with my father’s accelerated drinking. I didn’t call her back. Coming back to my apartment was like moving in all over again, trying to find my place within this space. It even seemed like the fresh-paint smell had returned in my absence. Sounds I had gotten used to suddenly became frightening again: scratching on the roof, dozens of coyote yips activated by each ambulance that passed.

The morning after I got back, my back seized up in pain. First, my lower back was stiff and burning. To move at all was to induce throbbing pain. On the second day, my upper right shoulder seized up and I could not move my neck. When you’re alone, there is no one to bring you food or pain relief while you are seized up in bed, immobile. There is no one to stroke your forehead and tell you that you will be okay. There is no one to provide comfort. In these moments of pain that felt both endless and debilitating, fleeting thoughts become dark. What didn’t make sense to me was how emotional pain could become physical: how it could infect muscles and joints, inflaming them.