I FOUND myself obsessing over this one-time LOVER, who would come to my place, rifle through my BOOKS and then POACH whatever she wanted. It really was more COMIC, when it could have been TOXIC. For she would place them on her own shelves, pretending to have read them. She painted herself into some intellectual corners at her cocktail parties, where the titles prompted complex questions and tricky questions. Sometimes I rescued her and, well, sometimes I did not. Little did I know that together we were showing seeds of destruction, so maybe it was a more poisonous habit than I realized at the time.

Georg’ann