Paradox
If we follow the trajectory of eros we consistently find it tracing out this same route: it moves out from the lover toward the beloved, then ricochets back to the lover himself and the hole in him, unnoticed before. Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.
— Anne Carson, “Eros the Bittersweet”1
On Corey’s birthday, I w…