At three-thirty each morning, the single cicada beneath the bedroom window begins to sound so ragged and worn that for the first time I understand his song is not a mere byproduct of summer intended to comfort me in my long night’s dip into death and dreams, but is an intense effort at survival, a remarkable labor.

I love when I have four women seated in my exit row,
the flight attendant says. Once upon a time she would have been called a stewardess.

A woman at the County Fair told me that I had keen powers of observation.