"The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue. ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room."

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And there I was with the stars hanging above my house like live wiresand the night sky the color of stockings. I stuck out my tongue to taste the skybut could not taste. I inhaled deeplybut could not smell. I used to look to the sky for comfortand now there was nothing, not even a seam, and I looked down and saw that it did not even reach the ground. And my only company was the satellites counting their sleep and the Sorrowful Mother swinging her empty dipper in the darkness, the Sorrowful Mother picking her way through the stars over my roof. And I knew I was nowhere and if I ever took my hands from my ears I would fall.

— Matthew Rohrer