We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.

The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.

With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.