Last month, for the first time in more than a year, I slept in a bed that was not my own. At the foot of a ravine, on the bend of a river, I fed logs into flames and drank red wine. I poked coals and consumed Sarah Sentilles’ Draw Your Weapons until the evening turned charcoal. Then I settled under the star-shot sky to think about the connections she had drawn between art and philosophy, trauma and morality.

Later I lay in bed and, through the bleed of rain down the wall-length window, read the constellations. To the sound of wind buffeting leaves and bending limbs, I traced the contours of my partner’s body. I fell asleep to the rushing sound of the river.