It was inevitable: Yankel fell in love with his never-wife. He would wake from sleep to miss the weight that never depressed the bed next to him, remember in earnest the weight of gestures she never made, long for the un-weight of her un-arm slung over his too-real chest, making his widower's rememberences that much more convincing and his pain that much more real.

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?

We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.