I Am Too Nervous To Eat Pie.

Then I Said Something. I Said, Suppose, Just Suppose, Nothing Had Ever Happened. Suppose This Was For The First Time. Just Suppose. It Doesn't Hurt To Suppose. Say None Of The Other Had Ever Happened. You Know What I Mean? Then What? I Said.

What Good Are Insights? They Only Make Things Worse.

She Serves Me A Piece Of It A Few Minutes Out Of The Oven. A Little Steam Rises From The Slits On Top. Sugar And Spice - Cinnamon - Burned Into The Crust. But She's Wearing These Dark Glasses In The Kitchen At Ten O'clock In The Morning - Everything Nice - As She Watches Me Break Off A Piece, Bring It To My Mouth, And Blow On It. My Daughter's Kitchen, In Winter. I Fork The Pie In And Tell Myself To Stay Out Of It. She Says She Loves Him. No Way Could It Be Worse.

It's Possible, In A Poem Or Short Story, To Write About Commonplace Things And Objects Using Commonplace But Precise Language, And To Endow Those Things—a Chair, A Window Curtain, A Fork, A Stone, A Woman's Earring—with Immense, Even Startling Power.

I Could Hear My Heart Beating. I Could Hear Everyone's Heart. I Could Hear The Human Noise We Sat There Making, Not One Of Us Moving, Not Even When The Room Went Dark.