The gate began rolling open, I slipped through, but it kept opening. Even after I was seated inside across from Don, in his den, I could still hear the gate opening.

And now that I had vowed to hang out with this man until I died, I also thought a lot about dying. It seemed I had not only married him but also married my eventual death. Before the vows, I might have lived alone, but forever; now I would definitely not be alone and I would definitely die. I had agreed to die, in front of all my family and friends

Every living thing had mysteriously died the second we turned the camera on.

We thanked each other many times. It was unclear why we were so thankful – it had to have been for totally different reasons, or maybe just the shared high of communion.

They were small, but they no longer seemed cute; there was a strong man inside of each one.

The moral of these people was clear to me: if you spend your life endlessly cruising around the world, never stopping to plant children on dry land, then when you die some Greek woman you don’t even know will become the steward of your legacy. And when she wants more room in her house, she sells your legacy in the PennySaver. And no one wants it.

RON – SIXTY-SEVEN-PIECE ART SET

like an obsessive-compulsive angel, working furiously on the side of good.

I would pick up where I had left off before I met him, when I was thirty. I would finally cook the great northern beans into a soup, and I would sit and eat that soup, alone, and then I would go to sleep, as if my entire life with him had been a single long day.