Maybe it’s because it’s pouring rain, or because something about the end of the summer always makes me sad. Maybe it’s because my husband is out of town for the weekend, and I tend toward the morose. Before he left this morning he came back from his morning run dripping wet, from the rain and sweat, but also with tears. He said (my emotionally stable, steady husband) he had made himself cry while running imagining what it would be like if I died.

See, strange things happen to me when he’s not around. Usually they involve spiders and my intense, clinical arachnaphobia. And he was running and wondering what strange thing might happen to me this weekend while he was gone, and then he what-if-ed himself into tears. I do this on a regular basis, I should say, and he knows this: I imagine what my life would be like if he died. It’s pretty bleak, but somehow cathartic. Like I said, morose. Anyways, he’s not used to it.

This wouldn’t have been so strange, except today while resurrecting my lapsed blog subscription RSS I came across a review on BookSlut of Ander Nielsen’s Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow, and it tapped right into our strangely sad morning. And then I thought of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, and Francisco Gomez’s Say Her Name, and thought wow – I just made the saddest reading list ever. You’re welcome, world.