Is there anyone who does not have conversations that never occur? Who does not imagine discussions with people whom they know or whom they will never meet? Who does not rehearse important interactions, worrying their words into a shape that will never be realized? Who does not replay the sentences and fragments that were spoken in haste or anger, and rewrite them with the elegance of Alice Hoffman or Jim Harrison?

So here is one of my recent ones, rather like a tiny story, born from the book As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem.

“I’ve just read two of your books,” I say.
“Which two?” the author questions.
“First, I read Girl in Landscape and then As She Climbed Over the Table.”
“Across,” he corrects.
“Of course,” I admit, “Across, not Over.”
“It’s the prepositions that matter, isn’t it?” he muses. “More so than the adjectives, or surely the adverbs, they define our lives.”
“That should be the title of a book – Prepositions Matter,” I respond. “What if the bullet had gone over, not through, JFK? Or the planes. If they’d gone around, rather than into the buildings.”
“Yes,” he says. “Prepositions rule.”
“Prepositions rule.”