“When one's married for so long, always walking on four feet and always
breathing double breaths and thinking every thought twice through and
the time between the main things is packed double full with minor
details - then, sometimes, naturally, one yearns like an arrow for one
whole space thin as air. And you start up in the night, terrified by
your own breathing, which had just been going along as evenly without
you. But you don't rise up free - or even really as far as your knees
- not once. You strike a match. And there's one of you right there,
wrapped in flesh. Only then is it love.”