…she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy

It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: “It’s just that I thought maybe you were married to me.

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

Mom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn't see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word.

When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days.

The engagement ring is an emerald, and the dim light from the window is refracted green and white in it. The rings are silver, and they need cleaning. They need wearing, and I know just the girl to wear them.

It's funny how we like labels. If I ever have a bookstore, I'm not going to put any labels on the sections.