voyance

"A year ago today I wouldn't have dreamed I'd be where I am now: in the recreation room on the third floor of the State Hospital, watching, with my daughter, ten men who sit in a circle in the center of the room. They look almost normal from a distance - khaki pants, lumberjack shirts, white socks - but I've learned to detect the tics, the nervous disorders. The men are members of a poetry writing workshop. It is my husband Alden's turn to read. He takes a few seconds to find his cane, to hoist himself out of his chair. As he stands, his posture is hunched and awkward. The surface of his crushed left eye has clouded to marble. There is a pale pink scar under his pale yellow hair."

[excerpt from Aliens - Family Dancing by David Leavitt - 1983]