If You Are Lonely and You Know It (Currency)

by Yiyun Li

they were two people living in the present tense; as long as they kept to their routines, they were exempt from contemplating the future.

speaking does not guarantee a reply; being listened to and responded to requires status.

He was her only child, and he was one too many.

“Half the world believes the wrong things. The other half doesn’t believe the right things.”

You hold on to some things for sentimental reasons, and other things for practical reasons. The same with people—most of them.

only on those nights did he feel that perhaps talking to himself and the trees and the flowers and animals was not enough.

Had he had someone next to him, watching the same flowers reaching their prime and dying within hours, he might have said things that were interesting enough, lasting enough, to make a difference.

he thought a fire, a pandemic, a disaster would be something that happened only to others, people of more consequence than he was.

The world is full of random dangers that threaten to turn lives into statistics. The rational make forecasts and predict with data sets. Parents do not give birth to and raise data sets.

“Parenthood is not some special currency,”

“Being a parent is not a status thing.”

“What, procreation? The turkeys do it. All those dogs and cats do it. Your bees, too. Fuck and breed.”

If there’s one thing your mother and I showed this world, it was that we decided not to hold motherhood as an ace card.

strut around and demand all these special treatments, all these things they have no right to demand because . . . what? They belong to that species called parents?”

“There is never as good a parent as the one who doesn’t give birth to a child,”