We take this good coffee, the first in the morning, we establish together the plan of the day, of the week. Marie eats soft-boiled eggs with mouillettes. We both want this moment to last, we want to abolish the future. Nothing exists except this moment, this scene where we are talking, Marie and I, drinking our cup of coffee. But the best part is when she doesn't say a word, when I myself keep silent, and we hear each other think, her in my head and I in hers. The some seventy texts that make up this new collection by Serge Bouchard could be called "micro-essays", first of all because they were written for Radio-Canada radio, and also because of the artistic requirement which inspires them, that of brevity, that is to say of a prose as dense, economical and precise as possible, and which at the same time possesses the power of evocation of poetry. But above all, this collection is a book of love and mourning, entirely placed under the sign of Mary, the companion who died too soon, whose presence (as well as the absence) colors each page, each sentence, each evocation. Not that it is always about her, far from it; as always with Serge Bouchard, it is our daily life, our world, our past, the nature around us that is in question, and in particular everything that we do not see and that only the gaze sharpened by the poet anthropologist knows how to make us discover. But Marie is always there, very close, in the background, in the next room, in a way, and it is in her eyes and her own mind that everything unfolds, as much as in those of her companion. who holds the feather.