“She led him to the top of the stairs, where light came straight from the sky because the second-story windows of that house had been placed in the pitched ceiling and not the walls. There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn’t mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else—doorknobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouched in corners, and the passing of time—was interference.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

You are a cold drink of water, slaking my thirst

At the onset of the pandemic I chose to shelter in place with Toni Morrison. Previously I had tried to listen to her novels on CD on long car trips, driving solo. Each time I tried, I failed. Rewind to catch a word or phrase, rewind again.

In order follow the novel I would have had to pull over, I would never have gotten anywhere! Thus reading from her last novel, back in time I had the quiet and solitary space I needed to focus, read, listen. The stories are dense like a thicket, untangling roots  and limbs, the rhythym and cadence of the language drew me in.