Afterward, I curl around her. We lie in silence until darkness falls, and then, haltingly, she begins to talk...She speaks without need or even room for response, so I simply hold her and stroke her hair. She talks of the pain, grief, and horror of the past four years; of learning to cope with being the wife of a man so violent and unpredictable his touch made her skin crawl and of thinking, until quite recently, that she'd finally managed to do that. And then, finally, of how my appearance had forced her to realize she hadn't learned to cope at all.

After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled.

I hate this bizarre policy of protective exclusion, because it effectively writes me off the page.

So what if I'm ninety-three? So what if I'm ancient and cranky and my body's a wreck? If they're willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?

The sky the sky- same as it always was.

Honey, I plan to marry you the moment the ink is dry on that death certificate.

You work hard on a book and throw it out there and then it's beyond your control.