I found myself tensing in crowded places and in groups of loud teenagers, until Paris passed from curfew into our second confinement. Now my mind is over-packed with thoughts of isolation, injustice, and the upcoming election.

Sift past lives through a sieve, careful where the wind carries.

Tumble of organs, whose house of grief?

Reach past the veil. The spirits cannot hear you.

The three deaths of Susan Taubes occurred in one week.

“What he didn’t understand was that the more heavenly our experience, the starker its contrast with my mind’s occupations, the wider the chasm would yawn between us, the more alienated I’d be. It was like the story of Moses, in which the water of the Egyptians was turned into blood. A curse had crippled me. Shown blue ocean, I saw crimson gore.”

“It’s in making note of the variety of seemingly timeless strategies used by rising authoritarian regimes to create fissures in the foundations of democratic governments that cause them eventually to crumble.”

“Being alive, she thought, just being alive and a woman was enough to make her vengeful protagonist behave as she did. Ruth didn’t need to dial it up. She didn’t need to change a word.”