He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

I could no more have stopped myself from feeling that sadness than you could stop yourself from smelling an apple that has been cut open on the table before you.

I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them.

My mother once told me I was like water. Water can carve its way even through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.

Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future.

Seeing him again after so long awakened something inside me. I was surprised to find myself feeling sad rather than joyful, as I would have imagined.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.