Taking the Time You Need, a Voice Says in My Head

"I started to narrate my choking to myself as if transforming it into a story would keep me connected to a future in which I might tell it," the author writes. "Take all the time you need, a voice said in my head", he recalls his first-grade teacher telling him at each writing prompt. She was rumored to have once saved a child who was choking on a piece of hard candy by stabbing him in the throat with an emergency tracheotomy.