[we] made love, though it was a stretch to call it that. I was making love, I think; he was taking what I made.
When we arrived at the hospital, you were in a medically induced coma, which I was made to understand was a sort of freezing of you, a fabricated reprieve from your own body that would allow your inte...
They say the human body can lose 50 percent of its body parts and survive. But it depends on which parts, and which body.
There’s the past again, keeping its foothold, wreaking its havoc.
The heart is large, and there is more than one material in the bucket we call love. I loved your father.
The alliance of my father and brother and me seemed to trump normal adolescent activities. I was more often at home than out with my friends, and any entanglements I had with boys, I kept secret. My e...
Standing there, I came face-to-face with the unwelcome finality of death. What can you do with it? It stops you cold when you think of it; it leaves you no out.
She let me go. Not that she could have stopped me. Children will end up a world away, whether you want them to or not—unaware of the havoc being wreaked upon their histories back home.
Most never know the condition exists, because the single kidney grows large enough to accommodate
It was so undignified and unnecessary, the way married people behaved. The indiscriminate airing of grievances, the incessant flinging of blame and complaint. Of course, I had no idea back then what a...
If I expected to be forgiven myself, I would have to forgive indiscriminately from now on. I
I wanted that whole society frozen in revelry, and I wanted my feelings frozen, too. My life and all the things that had happened or might happen to me seemed distilled and poignant, and the evenings...
I knew it wasn’t the right kind of love, because it required nothing of me. I did not need to worry about keeping it alive or putting it out since it was kept alive quite independently of anything I m...
I closed my eyes. I dragged the memory of that day out of the darkness of time. I stepped through it, in my head, blurred image by blurred image, until finally, I saw it.
Actually, when a tree falls, it creates shock waves. And when the shock waves reach an ear or an artificial mechanism like a microphone, they’re transmitted into what we call sound, you said. The shoc...
A man like that, I thought, would take you in hand. A man like that would keep you safe from yourself. Was it love at first sight? Not exactly. But it was a haven in the storm.
Presenting me with a ring box, in which, instead of a ring, were a dozen old library cards—a symbol for love that could be borrowed, perhaps, but never kept.
Fucking parking spot. The woman hauled herself out of the front seat. Her face wrinkled with the effort and her small, old eyes leaked and blinked in the sun. Your father took a step back. He stood fo...
Watching you together—your hair and eyes, your flesh and bone, your three bodies so frank and solid in the world—gave me immeasurable pleasure. It was pleasure derived not from parental pride, but fro...
It's not always wise to assume that just because the surface of the world appears undisturbed, life is where you left it.