Cape Canaveral National Seashore, early April and I am standing in the Eldora Statehouse. I am with my best friend Tracey and her daughter, Roxanne.
We are staring at a tombstone.

One word, DOLLY, is engraved in its worn surface.

“Who’s that for?” says Roxanne.

“A donkey,” I say, reading the note that is mounted beside the tombstone.

“Good grief,” says Roxanne.

The tombstone stood in the spot where the donkey’s heart stopped, exactly where she dropped dead, still wearing her harness.

“They put it where she fell,” I say to Roxanne. “It says they loved her. She was a beloved member of the community.”

“Uh huh,” says Roxanne.

She turns away, bored.

She is fourteen years old and she cannot imagine, yet, falling, failing. She cannot imagine anything stopping, ever.

Later, Tracey and I are on the beach, at the water’s edge. The sky is the color of pewter. I think about the donkey and her gravestone and I remember my mother in the hospital before she died, the nurses doing something to her that hurt.

“Would it help if you held on to me?” I asked. When I gave her my hand she held onto me so tight; and I think, now, you could put a marker there, in that hospital room, because surely I fell there, my heart undone by that small thing, the way my mother held onto me.

“Look,” says Tracey. She grabs my arm and points. “Dolphins.”

The dolphins leap out of the water, turn away from us, come back, leave again. They are so beautiful, that I have to bend over.

Here, I think.

You could put a marker here, too. I was undone here. My heart stopped here.

How many places have I fallen?

How many times have I been undone?

All I have to use as markers are these words.

I will put them here.

I will make them say:

I loved.

I was loved.