Jonathan, she says, making her voice slow. I need your eyes.
The boy turns and, briefly, looks. She watches his body soften, the subtle, reluctant quieting of his limbs. He will not jump.
Sorry about that, she says into the phone.
The man groans.
I need your eyes, he says.
Somehow it works better than Look at me, she says.
The way you parent, he says. It tells me everything.

We’re lucky they hang out on the planet. They can just get back on the spaceship that brought ‘em here and go and leave us, but they’re gracious, they’re nice robots. They chose to stay.

Why is everyone so afraid of being alone in their 20s? What better time to be alone could there possibly be? I felt exactly the same way when I was younger, but now I don’t get it. I look back on my twenties and all I can think about is how much happier I would’ve been, if I had just been willing to pack my shit and walk out the door the second I started to feel disregarded or disrespected or compromised. The danger, for a woman who settles for too little, isn’t that she’ll be alone forever. The danger is that she won’t be alone for long enough. Instead, she’ll leap into the next thing before she figures out just how strong she really is.

Primitive people were conscious of the cycles of birth, life, and death, and of the sun, the rain and the seasons. They assumed responsibility for taking actions and performing rites that would keep those great wheels turning.