Helpmeet

by Naben Ruthnum

There’s either soon or too late, Louise.”

It was as though he had prefigured his loss of sight, and didn’t want to be surrounded by objects he had collected to look at.

The only difference she could see between the skin that turned the page and the page itself was that words were printed on one surface, but not on the other.

That was my first power over him: that I knew that, knew his nature, while he still had to discover

word can have such force, and a name is an entire incantation.

that Edward would want to know you just as intimately, that he was frustrated that his weakness, his enormous childlike spoiled failings, created distance between you.

Louise would stop writing to Bill, and he to her, recognizing that they simply were not necessary to each other any longer. But