LENA

I want to be precise about this because the precision matters, it arrived as one, had the specific and surface quality of one, the particular and formal shape of a family dinner request communicated through the specific and practical medium of a text from my father's phone that said Sunday dinner, seven o'clock, your presence is expected, which had the grammatical structure of an invitation but not the meaning of one.

An invitation implies choice.

Your presence is expected does not.

I had known this distinction since I was eight years old.

I read the text on Thursday morning standing in the kitchen with my coffee and I felt...