Dept. of Speculation

by Jenny Offill

The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out. A home has a perimeter. But sometimes our perimeter was breached by neighbors, by Girl Scouts, by Jehovah’s Witnesses. I never liked to hear the doorbell ring. None of the people I liked ever turned up that way.

All my life now appears to be one happy moment.

Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.

What Rilke said: Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.