I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.

With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.

I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.

Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.

To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.

I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep. My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.

That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.