Great Circle

by Maggie Shipstead

Circles are wondrous because they are endless. Anything endless is wondrous. But endlessness is torture, too.

but there is too much of the world and too little of life. I thought I would believe I’d completed something, but now I doubt anything can be completed. I thought I would not be afraid. I thought I would become more than I am, but instead I know I am less than I thought.

Closure doesn’t really exist, though. That’s why we’re always looking for it.

I owe him my life, Lloyd had said many times. Your life can’t be a debt, she’d countered once, or then it’s not really yours, and nothing has been saved.