What is love but not grief, or grief--love? Oh, to linger in the time-stand-still! A book of words FOR LOVERS meant to be read aloud, according to its publisher. THE AUTHOR agrees. Its multiple voices and aching perspectives in the same page or paragraph fight against being boxed-in or Other-ed. Even and especially by traditional narrative story arc (do our minds work that way), A.I. algorithm (ditto), (insert other cute, buzz phrase), publishing house agenda, formatting. IT'S 2026, post-9/11, a latest global pandemic, and the rest better left unsaid today. Oughtn't we slow down, read something new? Told in a different light. And listen to what our future selves might tell us when they, too, lie awake at night. As the novel's introductory note makes clear, "The year is 2121." Who'll be here then? And doing what.... 440 pages, sigh. ### A grief-wrought creature comes to terms with the suicide of his only child and a subsequent marital demise. He tries any and nearly every aid possible to buoy his sanity: drugs, sex, talk therapy and family gossip; travel near and far (real+imagined?), church and family traditions; other occupations and more??? schooling; literary therapy: writing to vent and better understand the world he wonders, wanders should he live in-- Recalling his own childhood, the man settles on those formative years with the lesbian/gf Berry--what nearly ended with a pregnancy unresolved. A child born and given away. MEANWHILE, he happens upon an inheritance, a trunk containing a long-dead family member's unpublished travelogue: centering largely on that man's own secrets, we explore the dead relation's escapades in the former Constantinople, a continent-straddling city of many names and conflicting histories.... IF "1" place can be so many, perhaps there's hope for me, our Main Man reasons in confession.