from 'Michael'

He did not have a trace of memory of his father, angel or human, and no memories whatsoever of being a baby or even a child. It seemed that every year he grew forward, another year from his past slipped away. His uncertain infancy and the dead end of his paternal track left him with the uneasy concern that perhaps he was the miraculous product of his mother alone. This made him, as he saw it, half of a person- the heart in his chest was half of a muscle twitching in its cavity, his brain half of a lobe resting in a half dome, the rest of his mysterious organs shivering uselessly against tissue, as if his body were a net filled with stunned silver fish. He came undone easily, he wept, he needed things other boys did not need.