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The only thing the ex-philosopher and my ex-husband had in common was that both of them invited me to live in the story of our relationship rather than its daily texture. Saving the widower from his grief. Saving the ex-philosopher from the vacuum of his finance life.

This was one of the lessons…

When she asked how I was doing, I said something vague but not entirely dishonest. “Oh, maybe a little overwhelmed.”

She looked me straight in the eye—I’ll never forget the clarity of her gaze, its tender X-ray—and, without my mentioning anything about a man, told me that she used to be with men…

He believed self-transformation was impossible, while I found it addictive. Choose your heartbreak: stuck in prison, or always on the run.

That summer I was ravenous for the world—for stoop chats on hot nights, and endless seltzer at my kitchen table, next to the open window, listening to the anonymous soap operas of strangers on the sidewalks below. I’d never felt more seduced by the city, more grateful to it. I was determined to tre…

For the first time in years, I was writing fiction—scenes with an artist father and his estranged teenage daughter. She was staying at his run-down house in the Texas desert. When she opened the fridge, I pictured the empty fridge in my father’s apartment. A prior version of me might have been enti…