At the end of the text, a small bestial form

This is the glimpse of the god you were never supposed to get. Like the fox slipping into the thicket. Like the thief in the night outside the window. The cool gray dorsal fin in the distance. Invisible mountain briefly visible through the mist formed of love and guilt.

And the stranger’s face hidden in the family picture. The one

imagining her freedom, like

the butterfly blown against the fence in her best yellow dress by the softest breeze of summer:

To have loved and to have suffered. To have waited for nothing, and for nothing to have come.

And the water like sleek black fur combed back that afternoon:

The young lovers rowed a boat. The boy reeled in a fish. The husband smiled, raising a toast.

While the children grew anxious for dinner. While something struggled under the water bound by ropes. And the warm milk dribbled down the sick man’s chin. And the wife, the mother, the daughter, the hostess, and those few people on earth she would ever wish were dead would be the ones she loved the most.