The Astonishing Alice Munro
Not sure which story this is from, I'll track it down and edit this post later. Now here's a master of short story form:
"Kallipareos. Of the lovely cheeks. Now she has it. The Homeric word is sparkling on her hook...Because she is not teaching Greek, she simply put it away.
That is what happens with that kind of thing. You put it away and now and again, you look in the closet for something else, and you remember, and you think, soon. Then after a while it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it, and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.
The thing that was your brightest treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not have contemplated, at one time, and now it becomes something you can hardly remember. That is what happens."
--Alice Munro
