Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving let's you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.

Is falling in love with someone's story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself?

This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal.

I'm just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

Every minute you spend with someone gives them a part of your life and takes part of theirs.

I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth, so you always remember where you came from.