In my late thirties, when for a short period I lived in Moscow, I sometimes wondered if there were too many words in the English language. Longing and desire, for instance: was it really necessary to have both? Couldn’t a single, flexible word suffice? Maybe want would work. Not need; that was different.

Having plenty of words at our disposal wasn’t doing Jack and myself much good, in any case. We were at an impasse—my word for it now, though back then I might’ve called it a checkpoint. Jack would’ve have named it a choice-point, I imagine. At any rate, although neither of us was skittish about talking, we couldn’t seem to find common verbal ground, and our conversations had grown increasingly fraught. My husband wanted a kid; I wanted to want one, which wasn’t the same thing. You like adventures, Jack kept saying. You’re a curious person; you’ve always been open to new experiences. Yes, I kept responding, but this isn’t an adventure we’re talking about. We can bail out of an adventure if it’s not right; we can’t do that with a kid. What do you mean by right? Jack kept asking, and though I tried, I couldn’t give him or myself a clear answer. Right as in natural? As in obvious? As in doable?

In my own life in Washington, too, things felt murky. From the start of my relationship with Jack a decade earlier, I’d had certain wishes: for plenty of breathing room, a reliable measure of playfulness, a loose-reined sense of security. Though I’d figured marriage would fulfill these desires, it seemed increasingly irrelevant to them. But was that in fact so? My chronic restlessness, a sense of looming entrapment—to what were they due, really? To Jack’s frequent comings and goings, his preoccupations with work? To the frequently tedious nature of my freelance assignments? Or to my ambivalence about the kid question?

Jack was waiting, I knew, for things to come clear to me, after which he assumed I’d say yes to parenthood. Inwardly I chafed under his patience. It allowed him to believe he had the upper hand—one of us, at least, knew what was best…. Still, I told myself, we were happy enough. Despite the tensions, there was a more-than-decent measure of goodwill and tenderness between us. No point lobbing more words at something that evidently resisted being voiced, at least for the time being.

Here is the puzzle: Have you ever accused yourself of one of the lesser moral flaws or questionable values which, if you were a character in a novel or a movie, would put you on the side of the people you don’t like? I confess to a soft spot for the humorless, heartless wife in Woody Allen’s Interiors. The movie invites us to despise her lonely passion, her addiction to beautiful objects to the detriment of what matters. We agree, don’t we, that what must matter is human warmth and sympathy and not the excellence of artifact?

I think of all the ways
the women in my family have died,

the slow disease of genetics and childbirth
here in the curve of my cheekbone.

The doctor speaks as if this bloodwork
were routine, and I smile to make it false,

make this procedure only a safe precaution.
I’m told to focus on the opposite wall,

on the poster of a record-breaking runner
whose breath I imagine leaving

in heavy strides toward a finish line.
But what I want is to forget

that a body is capable of losing.
The first time I saw the dying,

[...]

Back home in bed, at the moment when Dan reflexively reaches out for her nearest breast, Alyssa has to stop herself from saying something like: “Better make sure we reach the quota!” It’s not like he’d be offended—he’d probably think it was funny—but she is hyper-aware now of the habits of their shared life in a way she had never been. Perhaps this new anxiety is all to do with the engagement, a natural reaction to the prospect of spending the rest of one’s life with the same person. That must be it. But that night, when he is thrusting inside her, she experiences a strange dissociative sensation, as if the body being enthusiastically penetrated in the bed no longer belongs to her in any meaningful way. As if her mind is walling itself off from some physical threat.

It only gets worse over the next few days. Every time he initiates sex, her whole body tenses up and then retreats. He doesn’t seem to notice, or at least he doesn’t say anything. She starts making excuses whenever sex is on the horizon—cramps; a headache; she’s too tired—and she sees it hurts his feelings, this sudden pulling away from their physical life. But it is she who worries the most about getting hurt. Not just feelings, either. She has developed an inexplicable fear that while they’re fucking he will try to crush her with the weight of his body, so when they do have sex now, she maneuvers until she’s either on top or on her side. She imagines his big, capable hands around her neck, crushing her windpipe like a soda can. It’s one of his party tricks, crushing and twisting the empty can until it transforms into a neat, squat sphere.

A happy idea takes root: it’s not too late to take it all back. She could tell him she’s been on some bad medication that’s been fucking with her moods, and then promise to throw away the pills so that things can get back to normal. They could even laugh about it, once enough time has elapsed. It is almost unbearably tempting to do this, knowing the words would summon his broad smile, his instant forgiveness, and that afterward they could go drink rosé and eat paella in the shadow of a medieval bell tower, and maybe, later on, dance in a dimly lit square by a fountain. The vision is so powerful and beautiful she almost succumbs to it.

But then she thinks again about his hands, their strength and size, about what it has felt like these last few weeks to have his body pressed against hers—the rush of panicked nausea; the irresistible urge to run as far as she can—and she knows she has to go. The fight-or-flight response is already uncoiling like a snake in her brain. She can feel her neck going red and beads of sweat forming behind her ears.