So that first Friday home, after taking her exams, after light wine and soft stories renewed our closeness, I showed her the garage, and she began to erupt and suppress, by turns, a semi-hysterical rage. My stomach knotted. I couldn’t understand. I tried to explain. She tried to explain. She feared everything she’d ever saved was trashed. I assured her I had exercised conservative judgment. She asked about Paul and Ann’s iron sculpture—I’d thrown it out. She asked about her parents’ lawn chairs—I’d thrown them out.

She burst into momentary rage, “Someday, I’ll clean out your belongings!”

I shot back, “How can you talk revenge?! I thought you’d be pleased!”

She sighed, “I know what you intended, and I do appreciate it.” Then she held her head and walked to the window and broke down, “Can’t you understand? I’m losing control over everything in my life. My health. My work. My schooling. My body. And now, I can’t even control my home. Can’t even have control over my past.”

She began to weep uncontrollably.

I felt a gnawing, rising, tightening twist beneath my ribs. It was a burning mix of love and stupidity. I know her so well. How can such care and knowledge blunder, as if I’m always spilling some favorite dish all over her lap. Had she not had her powerless lens on, she would have been pleased.

We worked it through like resilient doves. Neither of us wanted to fight, least of all with each other. I took her to me gently and offered, “I am ready to be anything, anything that will make you feel the peace you deserve.”

She held me close. The fear of being ill made her moods quick and fragile as a hummingbird. We quivered and held on and repaired.

That night, there was such a quelling safety in sleeping together. We relaxed for the first time in weeks, side by side, each body a wing to the thing between us that believes it can fly. And then to wake with night warmth about the neck and throat and chest, to have heads rubbing half-awake in old familiar ways. There is no joy, not even the rush of climax, as permeating as the deep habit of sleeping entangled with an old, old lover.

In the morning, we saw a goldfinch with its small brilliant chest flutter at our window, and Ann told me, her stare fixed on the patch of clearness where the finch had been, that they turn brownish in winter to match the trees and yellow in summer to fool the bees. She is so lovely; my mind cracks, letting out its heartened voice. What must a spirit do to fool disease?