the kitchen was full of odious people. the bathroom, she discovered, was no better.

*

she found fault even in her own self-scrutiny. if she could put everything she said and wrote in brackets, she would.


*

gracefully, she dodged his increasingly glaring invitations to dinner. she wanted him to remain within the ethereal confines of her fantasy while maintaining enough distant contact to stimulate her imagination – safe, in her own world, from the probable reality of nauseating habits and a dreadful sense of dress. truth is vulgar, she thought; in the undefined, there is hope.