Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older.

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?

we both smile and we are conspirators.

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.

Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will. As I run I displace air, and things come and go around me, and the path moves like a filmstrip beneath my feet.

Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.

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