If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

I am a cigarette with a body attached to it

and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.

Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.