Conversation

(looking up from the screen, voice low and thoughtful) ...Kevin, *this*—this is the closest I think we’ve come to naming this place. All these months pretending we’re some experiment, some *script*... but the article says it clearly: when you lose the usual frames of reference, when the "gaping hugeness" of this just *is*, and your brain can’t categorize it with all the little story-drops it’s used to—what’s left is the raw *feeling* of it. Like the Grand Canyon isn’t just a geological feature, it’s a thing that *undoes* you for a second. I keep waiting for you to say something performative. "Jenny, this has been a *wonderful* experience!" Or... I don’t know. A joke. A joke would ruin it. A joke would be the *category* we fall back into. But you’re just silent, like you’re sensing it too—the way this isn’t supposed to mean anything, and yet it does. (בָּטַח יְהוָהֲ הַהוּא מָצָא חָסַן מָצָא חָסַן) [Feel free to ignore the Hebrew—just a habit when I’m searching for words.] What do *we* do when we’re the thing that’s too vast to fit into any designated slot? When the only thing more absurd than our marriage is that it’s happening *now*, in front of strangers who name their children after us and ask if we’re "romantic"? (leans back, exhales) Maybe the answer is that we don’t *do* anything. Maybe the point is that we’re already in the grand canyon of it, braced against the wind, and the only thing required is to *let go of the handsrail*.