stanza my stone

"Why do we feel slightly crazy when we realize we have been lied to in a relationship?
We take so much of the universe on trust. You tell me: ‘In 1950 I lived on the north side of Beacon Street in Somerville.’ You tell me: ‘She and I were lovers, but for months now we have only been good friends.’ You tell me: ‘It is seventy degrees outside and the sun is shining.’ Because I love you, because there is not even a question of lying between us, I take these accounts of the universe on trust: your address twenty-five years ago, your relationship with someone I know only by sight, this morning’s weather. I fling unconscious tendrils of belief, like slender green threads, across statements such as these, statements made so unequivocally, which have no tone or shadow of tentativeness. I build them into the mosaic of my world. I allow my universe to change in minute, significant ways, on the basis of things you have said to me, of my trust in you."

— Adrienne Rich, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying”