“What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence” begins with the anonymous fifty-seven-year-old narrator announcing that he has a friend with a son in an Arizona prison. About once a year, this friend visits his son. The friend says that the hardest part of visiting is leaving, in the painful knowledge that his son is left behind, trapped in prison.

The narrator has just received a letter from a lawyer announcing the death of his friend, who is called Donald Williams. Inside the lawyer's envelope is a sealed letter that the friend has addressed to the narrator. The narrator is surprised that Williams thought him significant enough to be informed of his death. They had not known each other well and had been acquaintances rather than friends. Because of their not being close and because he accepts death as inevitable, the narrator...