“All my life, I should not have worried so much about looking foolish; I see that now. Signs matter. And all waves are dangerous, especially the ones you refuse to see coming.”

“I no longer blame Thing Woman or myself quite so much for N´s leaving us. I look at him sometimes for an unguarded moment and see a tall, crooked man with yellowing teeth and a leer. I see new N. Bad N. Vulnerable to anyone with a vagina. I also see Good N, just a glimpse, here and there. And Noncommittal N, an extra in his own life, just hitting his marks and looking well pressed. He´s become a whole group of people, a cache of ghosts tugging at my sleeve.Good N was phenomenal.”

“People told me not to get married; I didn´t listen. No one ever listens, it seems to me now. Perhaps people should stop trying to communicate. N was not a communicator; early on, I´d insisted on communication. Now I see his point acutely. I would love to have him back to not communicate with me. I would never ask for communication again, I would simply go elsewhere for the deep fish. Also, I´m not at all sure I want to hear what he has to say in this new vista. This works out well.”

“Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened.”

“You can hear now. Your inner ear is formed.I shout "I love you" into the bedroom. Then I feel stupid. Then I don't. This is pretty much the story of my life.”

“There exists a sac of skin that distends when I'm tired, beneath my eye. Irreversible tissue damage. Something stretched too far, which has come back changed. I've thought of having it surgically corrected. Michael swears it's unnoticeable, the tiny pouch of loose skin. Yet not long ago, seeing me stare critically into a mirror one morning after a late night, he offered to pay to have it removed with lasers.I declined. I didn't tell him that I need it, in some perverse way. A reminder that you can never, for any reason or length of time, no matter how much you love or believe you love, change someone.That believing you can might end you.”

“I love you as the mother of my child": the kiss of death.Mother of His Child: demotion. I am beginning to see this truism: Mothers are not always wives. I have been stripped of a piece of self.”