My wife, Y, is slight and fragile as a paper bird--I love her gently and unerringly to avoid being cut. At night she sings on the porch, if it is warm enough. I watch the back of her head dip and cant, foregrounded by the stars and the city. She is fine enough as a human being, I suppose, but she is nothing I have ever given any thought to in any way, not even as we cake our bodies together in bed. She is like the waxen surface of a milk carton, something that can be better felt than described or recalled, and, when felt, is forgotten or stowed away.