The Paper Palace

by Miranda Cowley Heller

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. —Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”

pooling sun, the whitecap flecks, the crest and swell. Every single time I see the ocean, even if I’ve been there in the morning, it feels like a new miracle—its power, its blueness always just as overwhelming. Like falling in love.

Does letting go mean losing everything you have, or does it mean gaining everything you never had?

Men fall asleep immediately after orgasm. Women wake up. It’s curious, that off-rhythm. Perhaps, after the exhaustion of trying to impregnate us, they need their rest. It’s our job to get back up on our feet, sweep the cave, tuck the children into their bed of rushes, nitpick their head lice, tell them stories that someday they will tell their own children: about fire, stone wheels, a cave dripping with stalactites—luminous color, frozen in time; the boy who chased a great bird through the sky; how to cross the open sea.