The Love Letter

So I sit all day in my desk chair indexing my book, because it has to be done and I can't afford to pay someone to do it for me. It's in the 50s and sunny in the middle of a Chicago winter. My butt hurts from the chair. I look out at the sunshine. I skip the gym. Towards late afternoon I realize that I have unconsciously reversed the names in a citation in my bibliography of a two-author volume that gf wrote with someone else. I have put gf's name first, even though on her book it comes second. I must have thought it SHOULD come first. This is further proof that really I am a bad scholar. I make things up, just like James Frey.

I panic about this. My book is in galleys and I will have to change this entry all around.

In an anxious phone conversation, I tell my friend in Austin.

"Leave it," he says. "No one will ever notice except the other author. Let the reversal stay hidden in your text forever, like a secret love letter."

It stays.