From Aurelia, Aurélia, a memoir, which will be published this month by Graywolf Press.

The driver let me out at the foot of an unpaved lane bordered by trees, their crowns black and still as stone. He wasn’t supposed to go further, he said, giving me the once-over. My husband had died a year earlier and I was used to being examined for symptoms, as if widowhood might be catching.

Flickering lights in the distance or near at hand, it was impossible to say—they could have been bugs, windows, stars. I kept walking without knowing where I was going,…