No matter how interminable something feels, there is always, always an ending. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's bad; sometimes it's a matter of indifference, and sometimes it's heartbreaking, and your life is never the same thereafter.

We stand a professional distance apart, as if I can’t feel his pain screaming in my head. Mine amplifies his; they share a joint sound—that of glass breaking—until they swell to a crescendo that deafens.

Are you afraid of falling, baby? No, I’m afraid of landing. [He’s laughing, and I’m smiling.] Stupid idiot smile, don’t you know what comes next?

My body was a machine, plain and simple. I worked it to stay strong; I fed it to keep it running.

Have you ever watched a child learning to walk? Before this week, I never had, but there's a certain grace to it. Well, if not grace, then tenacity. Fall down nine times--get up ten. And the tenth time you get where you're going, you don't stop, not for obstacles, not for other people telling you to stop. You don't listen to anything but that inner voice until you arrive where you want to be.

I imagine the ones we’ve lost as ghosts who prowl about the edges of the light, waiting for us to join them. Sometimes that’s terrifying, and sometimes it’s reassuring, a promise of homecoming.

I'll always want him. Until every sun goes dark in every sky, until I am nothing more than long-forgotten cosmic dust, I will want him. And even then I suspect my particles will long for his.