She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things. - Jhumpa Lahiri

Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.

Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.

Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.