Atlantic Monthly Press

But there’s always that one last piece to shove in place, even if it’s the wrong shape entirely.’
They laughed heavily, a sort of deeply sympathetic agreement that was like a salve on my shredded nerves.
‘It always feels like that in the field, doesn’t it?’ Nell said. ‘Then you get back and it all fits.’
‘Does it?’ I said.
‘If you’ve done the work it will.’

? I didn’t want anything to do with women or anthropology at that point.

but it hadn’t upset him. He’d walked

And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And probably,
if they don’t waste time
looking for an easier world,
they can do it.

in your dreams you have sullied and murdered,
and dreams do not lie.

whatever
the name of the catastrophe, it is never
the opposite of love.

How does any of us live in this world?

Home, I said.
In every language there is a word for it.
In the body itself, climbing
those walls of white thunder, past those green
temples, there is also
a word for it.
I said, home.