This is in a deep sense the story of a poem. After I lost faith in marriage, I met a couple whose way of being together restored my sense of what is possible, and it is their marriage that is mythologized in the poem, "Of Time and Bread and Coral," presented here. The poem became the basis of a friendship with an astonishing young woman and gave her hope as well. Later, I met a man who also doubted love; when he read the poem, he too came to believe that it might be possible for him, who loved men, to love and be loved. My interactions and relationships with these people, with my family and in particular my father, are the basis of three prose sections in this volume. These prose pieces are related through the act of communication across profound fear and the resulting-and causative-barriers.