Margaret thought of all she knew for certain, that day would always follow night that love was never wasted nor was it lost.

What did you see?' he asked then. Nothing,' I told him. 'Because nothing is what you wanted me to see, though the man on the table might disagree.

My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.

He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her.

She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.

If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.