Summary

The first five vignettes serve collectively as a background story behind the narrator’s motivation for writing, as well as an introduction to the remaining 111 vignettes.

In the first vignette, “Here I Am,” the narrator begins by explaining, in the present tense, how she discovers nightfall as a toddler, a discovery she makes accidentally because she was left unsupervised. She uses a child’s repertoire of imagery (i.e. cooling milk) to describe how the darkness spreads, how the sounds and the air change, and outlines outside her window diminish. The darkness closes in around her. She also describes how she herself feels changed by the fall of darkness, that it makes her want to leave. She writes, “all of a sudden, I know…here I am” (2).

In the second vignette, “The World in Your Head,” the narrator tells the story of her...