I believe in touch; Sarah Morris says that in order to feel loved you must be touched five times a day, and ever since she said that I find myself unconsciously counting—one, two, three—four—five—and it is true, that these small touches are significant. I know and recognize them, filing them into categories in my mind: my mother’s soft lotion touch, my sister’s backrub, the way Lily curls her baby fingers around my adult ones; the way my friends reach for my hands in the theater or on the street; how sometimes the act is so effortless we do not realize we are holding hands until we look down and see our hands as companions. I value the passing intimacy of a smile from a stranger and the touch of people who do not need long friendship to rest their hand on my head or shoulder and how that means even more because they reach out and I reach out and together, we find confidence in our human need, touch for touch, skin for skin.

The air has been holding rain for days now; tense with thunderstorms. Hannah made a three-layer chocolate cake yesterday; the richest, heaviest cake I’d ever tasted, and this is how the air feels—pregnant, dense as a mountain chocolate cake with a spirit that makes the trees bristle and restless.

Am now bidding adieu to the internet and hello to the marbled columns of Wilson Library. They say you can’t eat in here. Don’t worry; you can.