The symbol for hope.

So, I think what shocked me was that in this sad house with only one light on, suddenly I felt joy. Joy as you met me at the door. (I meant to ask you why you were here so late in the Louisiana night. That would have made sense. But I didn't ask.) And when you took me in your arms and walked me backward through room after room, I didn't question. (Although, I should have, right? Not just as to why you were here, but also I should have asked why he wasn't. Was he gone? Was he dead? Did I send him away? Does it even matter? I was finding that it did not.)

And the weight of desire wasn't mine any longer. It was on you now and you carried it as if it were easy. As if you'd been born to this. And into that dark room at the back of the house- the last in a long row of lonely rooms where I'd finished a marathon eight years of thwarted desire, doing work that wasn't mine to do, carrying a weight that wasn't mine to bear- you pushed me back. I fell onto the bed. And suddenly it wasn't the one I'd slept in alone for the past year and a half. This wasn't the room where I'd pondered the death of my love for him long before my will to try here was beaten. Before good sense and grief made me steady and old. Suddenly, that bed and that room and the entire universe filled up with light and purest joy.

Such elation, which I have only ever felt before God... my mind spun, and heart leaping above the world and sky, my soul was still and knew... and now I remembered reading somewhere that feelings about God and sex originate in the same region of the brain...so, see, it all made sense and ohgodohgodohgodohgod.

And of course, none of it was true, but that was the dream I had.