We did it in darkness, In water, and in the high grass. -Yehuda Amichai, “We Did It” We didn’t in the light; we didn’t in darkness. We didn’t in the fresh-cut summer grass or in the mounds of autumn leaves or on the snow where moonlight threw down our shadows. We didn’t in your room on the cano...
she asks him, as if he’s guilty of an indignity on the order of disrobing down to all but his socks. “You’re leaving on your cross?” It’s not a question he’d have otherwise asked, especially given the way the cross—gold, delicate, and too tiny to crucify a God larger than an ant—brushes the pale ...
—The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931–1965 I read an essay once—I don’t recall who wrote it—about waiting in Hemingway. There’s that couple at the station in “Hills Like White Elephants” waiting for the express from Barcelona, and the little boy with a fever who is waiting to die in “A Day’s Wait.” T...