The Going The Going

The cloth edge of certainty has shredded down to this: God and love are real, but very far away. If I go to Istanbul, will I return? That is not one of the permitted questions. When I go to Istanbul, how will I bear to return? I could slip into the small streets that lead away from the souk, then run east to the high plain and the Caucasus-- It's all alone, the returning, the going. The cloth, a soft holland whose blocks of blue and lemon once cheered me in a skirt, now dries dishes. God and love are very far away, farther even than the mountains in the east.

May 6, 2009 / Books & the Arts / April Bernard