Dept. of Speculation

by Jenny Offill

Someone has given my daughter a doctor’s kit. Carefully, she takes her own temperature, places the pressure cuff around her arm. Then she takes the cuff off and examines it. “Would you like to be a doctor when you grow up?” I ask her. She looks at me oddly. “I’m already a doctor,” she says.

Three things no one has ever said about me: You make it look so easy. You are very mysterious. You need to take yourself more seriously.

Hard to believe I used to think love was such a fragile business. Once when he was still young, I saw a bit of his scalp showing through his hair and I was afraid. But it was just a cowlick. Now sometimes it shows through for real, but I feel only tenderness.

Studies show that 110% of men who leave their wives for other women report that their wives are crazy.

The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.)