Are a "Prayer" and a "Kiss" irreconcilable? This is the question Francis Etheredge examines through this medley of "moments," both painful and beautiful, which are laid out as a kind of word-quilt that ranges over many years of life and writing. A theme among these "impressionistic" accounts of life is the "sharp thread" of an almost endlessly repetitive pain of "passing through" relationships. Marriage emerges as a triumph of God, reconciling the apparent contradiction between the "prayer" and the "kiss."