There is a moment of existing only in the hollow between what you meant to say and what you actually said when a handful of syllables becomes the only thing keeping you from drowning. Not a lifeboat. Not a shore. A raft . Something lashed together in haste from whatever was floating nearby. Something that shouldn't work but does. We misunderstand language. We think of it as permanent, load-bearing, the sentences we build our identities inside. But the words that save you are debris. Driftwood. The broken-off piece of someone else's shipwreck that you grab because it's the only thing within reach. I have seen this happen. I have been  this happen. The woman in the emergency room who, instead of saying "I'm scared," tells the nurse, "My mother used to braid my hair when I had fevers." And the nurse, understanding something that no protocol could teach her, pulls up a chair. The raft holds. The man at the funeral who cannot speak of grief, grief is too ...