They had chemistry. Emmeline had never known chemistry.
Or if she had, it was the night the stemware went over the railing
when a sailor kissed her. That’s it. She never anticipated the tears:
glass ellipses, glass dashes, glass exclamation marks
punctuating all tenses, genders, numbers and persons,
each indicating the end of a sentence left unsaid.

But how can you indicate the end of a sentence left unsaid?
I put down the novel. A mole is a measurement in chemistry
– I know that – but J. staring at one on a person’s
shoulder said it was like a currant in white icing. They were reeling,
on the stairs, from the sherry and preponderance of remarks
that contrabassed or blunderbussed to a finale of tears.

I pick up the novel again. I welcome the random rips and tears
in the fabric of reality that allow me to glimpse the unsaid
from a distance of a century, or another country, where marks
or pounds or rubles were currency, or chimerae, or chemistry
hadn’t been invented yet – though there is obviously the roiling
of the human heart in every age, wherever there are persons

and obstacles, encumbrances, featured in these persons’
lives portend defeat. The reason for Emmeline’s tears
was that M. had built up a tolerance to her beauty, riling
her with ‘one can’t live on top of the Alps’ – the unsaid
being either the distillate or what was burnt off in the ...