I’ve never failed so many times before. I’m failing, and failing, and failing. And it’s so strange, because punishment never comes. “I’ve failed” I say. “I know what they think of me now” I say. And I ready myself for the blow, and then the grief of being too much work for a person. But punishment never comes. You refuse it, and it confuses and upsets me- this natural order made obsolete, this broken vase a thing I once knew. “Here,” you tell me, and hand this precious thing to me; “There was always a flower inside it.”