I've learned to do without a lot of things. If you have a lot of things, said Aunt Lydia, you get too attached to this material world and you forget … - Margaret Atwood

These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.

What’s with her?” says the painter.

“She’s mad because she’s a woman,” Jon says. This is something I haven’t heard for years, not since high school. Once it was a shaming thing to say, and crushing to have it said about you, by a man. It implied oddness, deformity, sexual malfunction.

I go to the living room doorway. “I’m not mad because I’m a woman,” I say. “I’m mad because you’re an asshole.

If you were a song
What song would you be?

Would you be the voice that sings,
Would you be the music?

When I am singing this song for you
You are not empty air

You are here,
One breath and then another:

You are here with me...