Daybook

How can a person speak when they lose faith in the authority of their voice? One night on the cusp of winter, a man sits alone, in silence, and begins to lay words on an empty page. He speaks of ancestry and stymied ambitions, of confusions and doubts, of what he despises and what he adores. He speaks of scripture and commandments, of conformity and evangelism; he speaks of the lust and the shame that have led him away from a doctrinaire upbringing, and of the love that has sheltered him in...