Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world’s oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons.

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.

It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.

People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don’t. There’s no one knows except the person who carts it around her own self.

I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they’re the things that matter.