I always want to say more than I say and this tendency makes me think my brain is soft. In medical books brains look pliant and gray and bloodless. Sometimes with Jay I felt like he was sculpting my poor soft brain. All of his talk was aggressive and astonishing to me. He acted innocent as though when he talked all he carved was air, but he knew he also carved me. The gray pulp of my mind and memories was reshaped over and over again. I talked back. Sometimes it was to tell him things but sometimes it was to make a wall of air to resist him. We had many things between us. The air that held and carried our talk was dazzling. It was charged with light neither of us generated. It saved us both.