The Feast that Follows Famine

I called Anna Lefler as the sun was setting, and we talked as the sun fell down—my eye on the purpled sky and the silhouetted tree (all its buds still in a clench). Purpled to dark, dark to the only lit thing being the moon, which is full and gorgeous this night. Have you gone outside? Have you seen it?

I'd been telling Anna about my day—an up and down day, intense from its four a.m. start. I'd been saying, Once upon a time I wrote a book that I believed in, a very different kind of book. I'd