I thought by twenty-seven I’d stop searching
for the story, as if stories were simultaneous
with action, rather than events recollected
incorrectly, rife with holes. My character wades
waist-deep in the bay, waiting for a revelation.
I want the plot to start here, at the end
of the two-lane highway, and then in the moon-
like dunes, the scrubby grass we trudged through.

Madeleine Cravens, “Provincetown”, in The Pleasure Principle