I · The Good Hours

There are mornings when the work simply opens. You come to the desk with nothing you can name, and by the second cup the book has told you where it is going - not in a rush, and not as revelation, but the way a door swings when someone on the other side has been waiting to let you in.

She had four of them that spring and remembered every one: the light coming in low across the table, the house keeping quiet, each sentence arriving already knowing the shape of the one before it. This is the hour the room is built for.