She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?

What you don’t know won’t hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you very much.

from under the ground, from under the waters,they clutch at us, they clutch at us,we won’t let go.

If you were a songWhat song would you be?Would you be the voice that sings, Would you be the music?When I am singing this song for youYou are not empty airYou are here,One breath and then another:You are here with me...

That's who is waiting for me:an invisible mandefined by a dotted line: the shape of an absencein your place at the table, sitting across from me, eating toast and eggs as usualor walking ahead up the drive, a rustling of the fallen leaves, a slight thickening of the air. It's you in the future, we both know that. You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a haton a hook that's not there any longer.