Galatea 2.2

by Richard Powers

Yet this couple was ancient beyond saying. Age tented just under youth’s peeling onionskin.

Love is the feedback cycle of longing, belonging, loss.

we’ve gotten so good at the walking-on-water bit that it no longer requires any energetic pretense to keep the act afloat.”

And thirty, the only age that would take such a theme on—old enough for a glimpse at meaning, immature enough to still think meaning pursuable.

My life story was one only through the barest red-penciled edits. On second reading, everything seemed different. I’d forgotten all the good bits, the scene swellers and interstices, the supporting characters and exotic locales, there for no reason but density and flavor. I wasn’t the genre I’d thought I was.

That is the single question we are granted to ask while in this body. East, West, North, South. Is there a base terrapin or isn’t there?

“Keep your fingers crossed,” Lentz told me. That gesture that wishes share with the momentary exemption from lies.