I might have been delirious. It was not likely that things would end that way. But as I stumbled over the field, sinking deep into a furrow with one step and rising to a crest with the next, I was too happy to suspect that at any moment my frustrations and disappointments, like a cloud of locusts, would darken the sky and descent on me again. The evening was serene, the light smooth and soft, the earth paralyzed, and I, far below, the only moving creature.

Lydia Davis, “The House Plans,” from Break It Down.

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