Heartbreak from the inside out

It’s like being underfoot when the whole universe decides to do a Chinese fire drill in the street: the sun changes direction, the gutters empty themselves, and everyone moves from one side of the road to the other. There you are, working peacefully in your garden, when suddenly it isn’t a garden anymore because a vast, deliberate stampede just trampled all your coreopsis, and now everything’s shifted except you. It’s hard to see a reason for it, but even if you could, you know you’re too bruised and crumpled to move for a while anyway. Meanwhile your neighbor (who is no longer your neighbor) is looking disapprovingly over the broken fence, so (even though you know that you’ll eventually get used to the backwards street-universe) you decide to ask her how far the confusion extends. You ease the question gingerly from under your ribs, but she just frowns at the ruined flowers with vague perplexity. “Nothing happened,” she says finally, and the worst part of all is the impossible feeling that maybe she’s right.