Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.

And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

With that strange knowing that comes over me, like a clairvoyance, I know that I am sure of myself and my enormous and alarmingly timeless love for you; which will always be.

The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you.

Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person

I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.