Sometimes, late at night, she stands in the backyard and howls—not because she is sad, but because her lungs are strong and it is a joy to turn air into sound. Her husband sees how happy she is and he asks her to scratch him, to turn him too. She wants to want to. She tries to explain to him that this is kind of her thing, that she needs this thing for herself. What she can’t find the courage to say is that she needs it to not be for him. He says he understands, but she knows he’ll never quite forgive her.
