When I open the door to Hen’s room, to our room, she’s lying in bed. She stands but doesn’t say anything. She closes the door behind me, then takes my hand and leads me to the bed. She takes off my shirt and lets it drop to the floor. She pulls my shorts down. She lays me down on the bed. She removes her shirt and then her shorts. She pushes her underwear down and lets it fall around her ankles, stepping out of it.

She comes onto the bed with me. She gets on top of me, straddling me. She puts her hand between her legs and guides herself onto me. She leans down, grabs my wrists, directing my hands, putting them on her back. I try to touch her face, but she pushes my hands back to where she’d placed them. She leans forward, resting her head on the mattress, to the right of mine. She puts her hands flat against the wall above the bed. She’s moaning. I am, too.

We stay like this until she’s done and rolls off, breathing heavily. We haven’t kissed.

She’s lying on her back, looking at the ceiling.

“Why do people stay together?” she asks a few minutes later.

In long-term relationships? I ask.

“In marriages,” she says.

Because they love each other, I say. They’re committed to each other. They depend on each other. There’s comfort there, security.

“No. They stay together because it’s expected, because it’s what they know. They try to make it work, to endure it, and end up living under some kind of spiritual anesthetic. They go on, but they are numb. And the more I think about, the more I think there’s nothing worse than to live your life this way. Detached, but abiding. It’s immoral.”

I’m not numb, I think. I’m not detached.

Marriage is hard, I say. Living with another person for years takes work and effort. You can’t just give up when things are hard.

She rolls onto her side.

“I know you think what you’re saying makes sense. And it might in theory. But I’m not talking about giving up when things are hard. I’m talking about forced survival when things are rotten.”

When things are rotten, I repeat in my mind.

I hope you’re not suggesting things are rotten between us, I say. I really hope not. Look at what we just did. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?

She touches my arm.

“You don’t have to worry about that. It was fine. It served its purpose.”

Hen, these last few days I’ve been feeling something real for you. Something new and incredible. I can’t describe it.

She places her hand on my stomach.

“Try,” she says. “What does it feel like?”

There are so many things, Hen, so many things—objects, stuff, and so many people. Just think about the canola fields and all those flowers and everything living in there. The grain at the mill. And think about the city and everything there, the stores and apartments and vehicles. Think about all the screens people have. For almost everything, any object you can think of, there are too many. There’s only one you, and it’s miraculous.

She doesn’t say anything but moves over closer to me, putting her arm around my waist. She leans in and kisses my bare chest. She stays like this, nestled into my side. I close my eyes. I want to remember this when I’m gone.

“I had a nightmare last night,” she says several minutes later. “It felt so real. This one was especially bad. I was terrified right from the start. I knew it was a dream. I was lucid dreaming, I could do whatever I wanted, I could control it, supposedly. But that didn’t make it any better. I was in this big room. I could see all the walls, I was aware of its size, but I also knew the space went on forever. The space was limitless, but I couldn’t go anywhere else.”

That sounds awful, I say.

“And the worst part—I want you to understand this—I wasn’t alone. That’s the worst part: I wasn’t alone.”