Just One Thing with Katie Kalahan

Photo by Alana Davis

Katie Kalahan’s story “What Can’t Be Counted” gives heartbeats, a smile in a photograph, a text forever unanswered, a compilation of quiet ways to feel the settling weight of a loss. Here they share just one thing about the piece:

“My short story, "What Can't Be Counted" originally had a different title, which was the tagline for the specific chain of gyms in which this story is set. I decided to remove references that clearly identified the key companies in the story, so that readers build their own set of associations. I like to think that the story's final title can be read two ways. First, "what can't be counted," like the antithesis to all the ways that Kees is trying to quantify his body and his life, and second, "what can't be, counted," meaning that the romance between Kees and Vinny, though it couldn't happen in the world of the story, still mattered.”