Making my way through a book of poetry and a bowl of palatable oatmeal, and it keeps occurring to me, one flash of insight hard on the heels of the previous one, that I am quick to read the book of someone else's existence. Quick to witness someone else's dash into the unknown with a torch. I courageously brave only the night, my reading lamp my only torch, illuminating no other path but the one laid out for a strong female lead.
I remember a man, once an uncle, who built his career on making structures outlive their inhabitants, preserved past the content of living memory. So keen in detecting structural flaws, he left his own house til too late, the moldings crumbling til my aunt brought the roof down around his ears. He made life safe for ages of long-dead residents, and she outgrew his living for someone else.
Fortune cookie says: Stay, and be unremarkable, leave and break hearts.