These Were Everyday Sounds Magnified By Darkness.

Imagining What It Is Like To Be Someone Other Than Yourself Is At The Core Of Our Humanity. It Is The Essence Of Compassion, And It Is The Beginning Of Morality.

She Would Simply Wait On The Bridge, Calm And Obstinate, Until Events, Real Events, Not Her Own Fantasies, Roe To Her Challenge, And Dispelled Her Insignificance.

She Loved Him, Though Not At This Particular Moment.

Had It Taken Her This Long To Discover That She Lacked Some Simple Mental Trick That Everyone Else Had, A Mechanism So Ordinary That No One Ever Mentioned It, An Immediate Sensual Connection To People And Events, And To Her Own Needs And Desires? All These Years She Had Lived In Isolation Within Herself And, Strangely, From Herself, Never Wanting Or Daring To Look Back.

He Was Looking At Her With Amused Suspicion. There Was Something Between Them, And Even She Had To Acknowledge That A Tame Remark About The Weather Sounded Perverse.