I Read Differently Now, More Painstakingly, Knowing

But Loneliness, True Loneliness, Is Impossible To Accustom Oneself To, And While I Was Still Young I Thought Of My Situation As Somehow Temporary, And Did Not Stop Hoping And Imagining That I Would Meet Someone And Fall In Love...yes, There Was A Time Before I Closed Myself Off To Others.

Sometimes Just To Paint A Head You Have To Give Up The Whole Figure. To Paint A Leaf, You Have To Sacrifice The Whole Landscape. It Might Seem Like You're Limiting Yourself At First, But After A While You Realize That Having A Quarter Of An Inch Of Something You Have A Better Chance Of Holding On To A Certain Feeling Of The Universe Than If You Pretended To Be Doing The Whole Sky.

She Was Gone, And All That Was Left Was The Space Where You'd Grown Around Her, Like A Tree That Grows Around A Fence.

. . . I Would Have Let Him Go One Finger At A Time, Until, Without His Realizing, He'd Be Floating Without Me. And Then I Thought, Perhaps That Is What It Means To Be A [parent] - To Teach Your Child To Live Without You.

Our Kiss Was Niticlimactic. It Wasn't That The Kiss Was Bad, But It Was Just A Note Of Punctuation In Our Long Conversation, A Parenthetical Remark Made In Order To Assure Each Other Of A Deeply Felt Agreement, A Mutual Offer Of Companionship, Which Is So Much More Rare Than Sexual Passion Or Even Love.