I have no pictures of people on my phone anymore, she said, only pictures of prose. When did I become a misanthrope?

The last time he saw her, she was wearing the same dress she’d worn the day the affair began. He thought of that dress. She thought of the hurt. No pictures of either, really.

She had to scroll back quite some ways to find faces. They made their first (last) appearance circa that last time they’d spoken. So this was a clue. Before that, people. After, novels: mentions of chrysanthemums, butterflies, an opera box. Here was a…