Section 8: pages 83-95 Summary

In "Insurance" by Vickie Karp, each bird is punctuation in the air, and the light protects people from the unadorned nature and insurance of belief , as well as the diminutions that rouse them. "Love is in the rewrites. Be slow" (p. 83).

In Rosellen Brown's untitled poem, Mother asks what friends are for because someone has just made her bitter with undone duty, and the narrator thinks friends are for nothing; all they do is touch one and fill one with music in the end.

In "Going Home" by Ben Judson, the author sees the addressee in the airport today, or rather a version from ten years ago, and wonders about the possibility of there being two of them in the world. The girl sits next to him on the airplane, and she is silent and iron-willed like the addressee...