Her uncle’s assimilated Turkish name, Miles spelled backwards.

And suddenly she realized that she had been writing for five years without knowing whether or not her missives became dead letters in the end. She had only seen one letter through to its final destination; others, she had mailed on faith. In that same moment of realization, a mosquito bit her forearm. Distracted from the epiphany she knew she was destined to have, she thought of Oedipus, who ran closer towards his destiny the more he fought it. She often had literary flashes in response to serendipitous incidents. Had she spent any time pondering this correlation, the series of contemplations would have yielded the answer to the question that had formed its own dendrites in her brain and lodged itself in permanently since that time in the fair when her parents lost her and a stranger took her to the police station: do I prefer to be alone or with other people? She scratched her arm. It was a quarter to three in the morning and she was feeling too wide-awake to submit to wistful reflection. No matter what the time, she sensed it was too late to think about more clever comebacks for past injustices. She licked the back of a stamp and immediately grimaced; she made sure the face of the nation's savior on the other side was now facing her, upright, before she smoothed the poorly shaded portrait over the envelope. The call for prayer began echoing from the mosques within hearing distance. She lifted the needle from her Miles Davis record. Selim. Miles spelled backwards.