‎I never wanted to have anything in my life that I couldn't stand losing. But it's too late for that.

It was silly, wasn't it? But the singing made it not silly.

Do you ever miss him? Every day. Every minute. Every minute, she says. Yes, it's that way, isn't it?

absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird

The pain has left but I know that it has not gone far, that it is sulking somewhere in a corner or under the bed and it will jump out when I least expect it.

There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.

Outside it's a perfect spring night. We stand on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, and Henry takes my hand, and I look at him, and I raise our joined hands and Henry twirls me around and soon we're dancing down Belle Plaine Avenue, no music but the sound of cars whoosing by and our own laughter, and the smell of cherry blossoms that fall like snow on the sidewalk as we dance underneath the tress.