Too much beauty can be hard to bear.

Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can’t understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?

There’s a Greek legend—no, it’s in something Plato wrote—about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find...

The 1st day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to do that forever.

And Annie showed me how ailanthus trees grow under subway and sewer gratings, stretching toward the sun, making shelter in the summer, she said, laughing, for the small dragons that live under the streets.

Real, but sometimes beautiful.