Day 4: "The Lives of Bryan"

Jennifer Sinor (The American Scholar, Summer 2023)

In this twenty-two-day series, we are counting down the days to publication (October 22, 2024) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-two essays included in The Best American Essays 2024. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Cheyenne Paterson and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.

“This would become a familiar feeling over the next two weeks, the desire to step outside of my life, shed it like a jacket, leave it behind. But grief has no edges; it is only center. Surrounded by strangers all eager to be somewhere other than where they were, I stood up, the phone still to my ear, and threaded between bodies in search of an outside I would never find.”

—Jennifer Sinor, The American Scholar, Summer 2023.