Do you read Zadie Smith or Sally Rooney? What about Donald Barthelme, do you ever read him or Robert Coover? Do you have a favorite book of James Baldwin’s, and do you prefer his fiction or non-fiction? Have you read all of In Search of Lost Time or the Neapolitan Novels or My Struggle? Do you agree with The New York Times’s ranking in 2006 of Beloved as being the best work of American fiction of the past twenty-five years? Do you still do the Sunday crossword with a blue Bic? What is your favorite Agnès Varda film? Have you seen most De Palma films or Spike Lee films? What about Ozu or Kurosawa? Was the best decade for American cinema the 50s or the 70s? Are you well-versed in Iranian cinema, and have you dipped your toe yet into the ocean of Bollywood films? Have you worked up the nerve to sit through Salò or Funny Games? Who is the unknown caller who keeps calling you? Did you ever read that article in The Believer about missing girls in Australia or what about that profile in The New Yorker about the teachers’ strike in Oklahoma? Did we ever talk about “Cat Person” or “The Crane Wife”? Do you subscribe to a newspaper to support journalism? Do you use the internet to read everything or do you print things out, and if so, is the paper made from recycled materials? Do you know about the negative environmental impacts of palm oil production? Do you still shop from Amazon despite the poor working conditions in their fulfillment centers? Why did you return my copy of Ducks, Newburyport with a movie ticket stub for the nine-ten showing of Parasite on the night you said you stayed in, went to bed early, practiced self-care? Are you sleeping seven to eight hours a night and running five miles a week? Do you meditate every morning? Are you staying hydrated and are you taking your daily vitamin B complex? Have you tried removing red meat from your diet? Have you tried blended burgers to slow down the rate of beef production? Have you been to all the major areas of Italy? What about the rest of Europe, have you been to Berlin Paris Warsaw Copenhagen London Moscow Oslo Madrid Vienna Prague Geneva Amsterdam Budapest Athens Istanbul Saint Petersburg Dublin Barcelona Brussels Lisbon Helsinki Bruges Stockholm? What are you doing Saturday night with quote-unquote some friends? Are you an Ellsworth Kelly fan or a Cy Twombly fan? Do Richard Serra’s parentheses or Louise Bourgeois’s spiders give you nightmares? Have you ever dreamed that you’re a butterfly? When was the last time you went to a rollerskating rink, with the dated playlist and sweat-tinged atmosphere of puberty? When you were young did you attend your high school’s football games, and was your mascot a tiger? Do you remember that the song that was playing when we first kissed was “66” by The Afghan Whigs? How are things at work? Is your father still recovering from his injured disc? Has your mother’s gallery sold any new work? Did your brother end up starting his own law firm? Will you be happier alone? Is your friend Meredith still having problems with her boyfriend, that guy who I was sure sold MDMA but you said no he’s actually a really good guy, we dated once or twice, it was a while back now. Do you know that your friend Sarah blocked me on Facebook. Is her sofa bed comfortable. Do you miss sleeping in our bed. Do you miss the dogs. Who will walk Faber and Farrar when I can’t. Who will remember the ATM pin. Who will assign personalities to the people who live in the building across the street. Who will go through the mail and tell me what I do and do not need to worry about. Who will watch the news and tell me everything will be all right. Who will hold out her shield and guide me through the world. Who will take me to a safe place. Who will lock the front and back doors. Who will turn off the lights. Who will look through the blinds and tell me when it’s okay to leave the house. Who will remember to live and breathe for me. Who will remember to wake up and do it all over again.