Another time, another ex. Catching sight of him through the window of a pizzeria. Too busy with his phone to notice as I stood staring in, swept back to the years of passion and grief. The lost years, as I had come bitterly to lament them. Staring in, not caring that I’d attracted the curiosity of several diners, I want to know, why don’t I feel more. I want to know how, where once was everything, nothing could be.

In the most romantic movie ever made, a girl yearns for her boyfriend, away at war, even as she finds herself forgetting his face. I would have died for him, she says. How is it that I am not dead?

The saddest musical of all time, one critic called it. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

“And you really think there’s no hope.”

And years later, riding the train to visit a friend in Philadelphia, through the gap between the two seats in front of me I recognized his hand, his right hand (all I could see) holding a book. Should I speak to him? No. Nor did I move to another car. Just rode along behind him, wondering, Why don’t I feel more. Remembering very well, though, what I had felt. The love. The hate. The promise made: Never again. Never again will I allow my life to be spliced with another person’s life—

“You’ve heard what I think,” he said. “Read the science and see what the world is doing about it. Could it be any simpler? Keep releasing carbon into the air and sooner or later—and more and more it’s looking like sooner—we’re fucked. And make no mistake, if there is in fact even a sliver of hope it depends on the survival of liberal democracy. Nothing is going to hasten the end of a livable planet faster than the rise of the far right. And behold, here they are, the two specters marching side by side.”

“But you know,” I said, “this idea of yours about people not having children. Wouldn’t the next logical step be for people to start killing themselves? I mean because everything we do, really, is contributing to the problem. Every time we turn on a light, or get in a car, or do most anything at this point, we’re using up resources, we’re polluting the earth, we’re destroying other species and dooming our descendants. If enough of us made the sacrifice by taking ourselves out—wouldn’t that help?”

“Not going to happen, obviously.”

“Any more than people are going to stop having kids.”

“Though it will come to that.”

“What?”

“People killing themselves to escape the heat and the scarcity of food and clean water. Many will do it before it comes to that.”

“Would you ever do that?”