HENRY: It’s ironic, really. All my pleasures are homey ones: armchair splendor, the sedate excitements of domesticity. All I ask for are humble delights. A mystery novel in bed, the smell of Clare’s long red-gold hair damp from washing, a postcard from a friend on vacation, cream dispersing into coffee, the softness of the skin under Clare’s breasts, the symmetry of grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked.

I love meandering through the stacks at the library after the patrons have gone home, lightly touching the spines of books. These are the things that can pierce me with longing when I am displaced from them by Time’s whim.

And Clare, always Clare. Clare in the morning, sleepy and crumple-faced. Clare with her arms plunging into the paper-making vat, pulling up the mold and shaking it so, and so, to meld the fibers. Clare reading with her hair hanging over the back of the chair, massaging balm into her cracked red hands before bed. Clare’s low voice in my ear often.

I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.