Acts of Service

by Lillian Fishman

Looking around at the moral compromises baked into every choice, it sometimes seemed as though inertia was the least objectionable course.

A life knows that it needs a shape and, taking cues from films and lives it has glimpsed, chooses a core around which to bend itself. A life recognizes the theater in which its keeper appears most real.

This is what is…is spectacular about love. That it brings you into a space with someone you wouldn’t understand otherwise.

Anytime I want, I can forsake this dinner party and jump into real life.

Is it possible to nurture a love that is not a referendum on yourself? At what stage in life is a person capable of such a feeling?

To whom was I responsible? To Ms. Bullens and Ms. Sabitova? To queer women? To the dream of justice? To myself? To Olivia?

There was something missing, and all of us knew that, all of us at least on our lucky streets that bloomed in the summer, the ones that we had done little to deserve—some belief in a genuine world, access to a feeling beyond flirtation and ambition.