It was the first time I thought, I will do anything. Her withdrawal opened a chasm in me, and I would do anything to fill it.

their textures—delicate as sloughed sheaths of faith—were enough to convince me that books were once bodies, that the bestial and the divine can reside in the same place.

I did not choose my female body. But I chose every image painted on it.

The Minotaurs we need to rescue are never our half brothers. They are always those monstrous parts of ourselves.

Falling in love is always the fear and promise of being hurt, of being healed.

That is the endless pleasure and frustration of the writer and the lover: to reach and reach and never become.

It would have been tempting, once, to make myself the hero of this scene—to admire my own power to rescue my brother. But the real power here is his, in knowing what he needed and in asking for my help.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote that “To be in love is to create a religion whose god is fallible.”

We coo at pregnant bellies, sanctify that most blatant acknowledgement of sex, but shame this ephemeral evidence.