““I will always be the other woman. I disappear for a time like the moon in daylight, then rise at night all mother-of-pearl so that a man’s upturned face, watching, will have reflected on it the milk of longing. And though he may leave, memory will perfect me. One day the light may fall in a certain way on Penelope’s hair, and he will pause wildly… but when she turns, it will only be his wife, to whom white sheets simply mean laundry— even Nausikaä in her silly braids thought more washing linen than of him, preferring Odysseus clean and oiled to that briny, unkempt lion I would choose. Let Dido and her kind leap from cliffs for love. My men will moan and dream of me for years… desire and need become the same animal in the silken dark. To be the other woman is to be a season that is always about to end, when the air is flowered with jasmine and peach, and the weather day after day is flawless, and the forecast is hurricane.””
![“I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]” quote by Linda Pastan](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/41e/linda-pastan-28836_absence_i-have-dreamed-of-our-bed-as-if-it-were_1737263.jpg)
