Alice had stopped tying her laces one Tuesday morning in June. There seemed something irredeemably arrogant about tying one’s shoes tightly with little bits of cord when so much of life just unravelled away. She still brushed her hair but even that dragged on too long and she felt tired of such gestures when there was so much else to do. Of course she hadn’t given up speaking like they said, she just felt the burden of words, the way they made you lopsided sometimes and so she waited to speak purely to others, but then they never seemed to wait for her, and so she stayed on alone, chiselling out words in her head.